An official press release has dropped a little bit of information about the next little comedy on the block. It is Sam Mendes’s (1917, Penny Dreadful) and Armando Iannucci’s (VEEP, AVENUE 5) satire called THE FRANCHISE. The franchise of the title is a crowd-pleasing series of superhero movies, in the vein of the Marvel Cinematic Universe material, and all the behind-the-scenes stress and problems that it takes to make the sausage, as it were.
The details read:
The HBO Original comedy series THE FRANCHISE debuts SUNDAY, OCTOBER 6 at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and will be available to stream on Max.
Logline: THE FRANCHISE follows the crew of an unloved franchise movie fighting for their place in a savage and unruly cinematic universe. The comedy series shines a light on the secret chaos inside the world of superhero moviemaking, to ask the question — how exactly does the cinematic sausage get made? Because every f*ck-up has an origin story.
Cast: Himesh Patel (STATION ELEVEN) as Daniel, Aya Cash (THE NEWSROOM) as Anita, Jessica Hynes (YEARS AND YEARS) as Steph, Billy Magnussen (BOARDWALK EMPIRE) as Adam, Lolly Adefope (Ghosts) as Dag, Darren Goldstein (Ozark) as Pat, and Isaac Powell (American Horror Story) as Bryson. Recurring guest stars include Richard E. Grant (GAME OF THRONES) as Peter and Daniel Brühl (MCU) as Eric.
Credits: Executive producers are Sam Mendes, Pippa Harris, Nicolas Brown, and Julie Pastor for Neal Street Productions; Armando Iannucci for Dundee Productions; Jon Brown, and Jim Kleverweis. The pilot was directed by Sam Mendes and written by Jon Brown, who serves as showrunner.
But better than all those details comes our first tease via this little clip.
Okay, I don’t know about you, but I sense some mad-cap Iannucci flavor right there. The whole snappy, irritable sorts who look like they are fully engaged and with it but are not – it screams AVENUE 5 at you, doesn’t it? The set pieces that look like a spaceship must have saved them budget as they have got to be tweaked AVENUE 5 leftovers plus, it looks like it is filmed right on a WB lot. But that doesn’t mean it is going to be a cheesy little show. THE FRANCHISE is a show that allows people of the biz to show the rest of us the lunacy it takes to craft an FX-laden movie with some added amped-up absurdity to make us laugh. We’ll see how all that works out. Look for THE FRANCHISE as a part of a big slate coming in November to HBO and Max.
