Shocking ‘well-kept secret’ at the heart of major superhero films

“Don’t have to dig very deep”: A Hollywood heavyweight has lifted the lid on the gobsmacking secrets within the industry’s biggest films.

They’re worth billions of dollars and span across multiverses – but any notion that box office-dominating superhero franchises are slick, well-oiled machines is about to be blown right out of the water.

In fact, the team behind HBO’s new comedy, The Franchise, which shows the behind-the-scenes struggle to actually make these tentpole films, realisedduring their extensive research that the chaotic stories from the real-life sets were too bonkers to even be believable in their scripts.

Franchise writer and showrunner Jon Brown (who previously worked on Succession) told news.com.au that there was one particular story he’d unearthed from a superhero film that blew his mind.

“I only heard recently … they will shoot the scene with the actors in it, then they will shoot a take of the exact scene and the movements of the camera, but without the actors in it,” he claimed.

“It’s in case they want to then put in different actors and shoot another version of the scene, which would be the actors, but with just a green screen. And what they basically want to do is just give themselves every opportunity so they never have to commit to anything.”

Billy Magnussen as Adam, dressed as superhero Tecto, in The Franchise. Picture: HBO

Brutal ‘in-joke’

While Brown – working with Franchise co-creators Sam Mendes and Armando Iannucci – has had plenty of experience on film and TV sets to draw from, he wanted the superhero comedy to be “so specific” to franchise films. One of the key differences, he discovered, was where the directors, traditionally the “ultimate authority” on a set, sat in the pecking order in the crew.

“There’s an in-joke we found that we haven’t used on the show, where within some franchise films, they refer to the director as the ‘intern’,” he shared, explaining that directors were usually the only people in the team who was new to the genre.

“They’ll be the person that often knows the least about how to make these movies because they’ve never made one before.

“But [the studio] also knows, the dynamic is that if they fire their director, it’s really bad and will be a bad story … so very often what happens is they sort of make the movie around them.”

Brown used an example of where a second unit of the production was filming sections of the story “without [the director] knowing], or they have [another edit] that’s going on” secretly.

“It’s just a weird thing that it’s like, you don’t want to fire them … but you don’t want to use them.

“So the director becomes this sort of symbolic figure that everyone has to rally around, but really the movie’s getting made somewhere else.”

Stream The Franchise from October 7 on BINGE and from October 10 on Foxtel, available on Hubbl.

Eric, the director on the franchise film at the heart of The Franchise. Picture: HBO

That bizarre dynamic is one The Franchise – premieringlocally on BINGE next month -explores through its on-screen director, Eric (Daniel Brühl), who arrives on the job after delivering a couple of “low-budget, Blumhouse-type horror movies” that had gone “really big”.

It’s happened time and time again in the real franchises, Brown said, where directors create low-budget films who make an unexpectedly massive sum of money, and are then hired to helm blockbusters.

“They often don’t know how to handle it and they can spin out,” he said.

Mirroring what often ends up happening in these scenarios, producer Daniel (Himesh Patel) inevitably shoulders the bulk of the burden to get the film made.

However, ambitions get involved and it becomes an inadvertent power struggle.

“There’s this murky bit of, ‘How much are we helping [Eric], and how much are we trying to steal the movie [and turn it into] how we want to make it?’”

Timothée Chalamet once famously revealed the blunt career advice Leonardo DiCaprio had given him as his career began to soar.

“No hard drugs and no superhero movies,” the Don’t Look Up actor had told his co-star.

Given The Franchise producers’ difficulty casting someone who had never previously been attached to a superhero film, it’s clearly not advice widely taken in Hollywood.

“[DiCaprio] is such an exception … There’s so few people that haven’t done some version of it,” Brown said, explaining they’d tried to find actors who were completely fresh to the genre in order to maintain their “parallel universe”.

They were eventually largely successful, bar actress Aya Cash, who had a leading role in The Boys.

“We’d really tried to avoid people from recognisable franchise movies … but it also shows you how pervasive it is, because it was impossible.”

The Franchise casting agents struggled to find actors who weren’t previusly linked to any superhero films. Picture: HBO

‘Well-kept secret’ exposed

Perhaps one of the most shocking allegations about the making of superhero films that was unearthed by Brown and his team was about the lengths leading stars feel “pressured” to go to in order to nail the unattainable physical look.

“It’s sort of a well-kept secret, but you don’t have to dig very deep to find stories of all those actors,” Brown said.

“The growth hormones and the things that people have to take … You can’t get a body like that just from working out so quickly and drinking water – it’s the growth hormone.”

He claimed they’d found out about the use of one growth hormone which was “designed to be injected into livestock, to fatten up cattle” and also allegedly being taken by actors.

“Obviously there’s a pressure, there’s like an arms race of other actors looking amazing,” Brown said, adding that it occasionally altered their facial features, making headlines and prompted speculation

“It’s like their bodies are going through these changes because there’s a pressure on them to look a certain way and they have to make their bodies a certain way – and it’s really sad, it’s really hard.”

It’s a grim and sensitive subject, but is tackled with humour within The Franchise.

Adam (Magnussen) is seen “spinning out” early in the series as he’s taking a human growth hormone that is designed to be injected into sheep.

“He’s found this hair on his back, it’s white and it’s curly, and he’s asking [the crew] to look at it, like, ‘does that look like wool to you?’ And they’re like, ‘sorry, Adam … do you think you’re turning into a sheep?’”

At one point, Brown said, Adam tells Daniel (Patel): “‘I don’t want to do this, but this is what I have to do to be this person’ – and it’s really true. These actors, it’s really tough on them. They have to be ‘on’ all the time.”

At first glance, it might seem like The Franchise is planning to rip the superhero genre to shreds (joining the ranks of high-profile Hollywood figures in recent years, including director Martin Scorses).

But the show, described as a “workplace comedy”, is not aiming to “bring [these films] down”.

“I like these films when they’re really good, I think they’re incredible,” Brown insisted.

“When they’re cynical and derivative, or takes the wrong tone, I think it’s a problem.

“But there’s nothing like going to see a movie in a packed cinema with a load of people. So I’m rooting for these films. You take out all of Marvel and you take out all of DC, and what keeps the multiplexes open?”

The Franchise premieres Monday, October 7 on BINGE, available on Hubbl, and Thursday, October 10 on FOX8 and is available On Demand.

Originally published as Shocking ‘well-kept secret’ at the heart of major superhero films