‘The Franchise’ Stars on Mocking Superhero Movies and Showing “the Absurdity of Us All” in Hollywood

The Franchise , HBO’s newest series from Sam Mendes, Armando Iannucci and Jon Brown, takes a satirical look at the behind-the-scenes chaos of creating Hollywood’s big franchises, specifically when it comes to superhero movies .

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“There’s so much truth in it you cannot believe it. The crazier it became, the more I felt, yeah, this stuff happens,” joked Daniel Brühl, who stars in the series as the superhero movie’s director, and in real life has played villain Helmut Zemo in Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier .

Though the actor explained his personal experience with the MCU was “such a well-oiled machine and there wasn’t that chaos and the absurdity,” Brühl remembered another film “that was a proper shitshow from the day I arrived.”

“I saw my miserable face every evening in the mirror thinking, ‘How am I going to survive this?'” he told The Hollywood Reporter at the show’s Los Angeles premiere on Tuesday. “And once this dynamic starts it’s almost impossible to get it right. So it’s still something that I’m fearful of when I accept something because it just can happen, especially when there’s a lot of money involved.”

The show follows the crew of one such big-budget flick as they repeatedly have to put out fires and try to keep the train on the tracks amid actor insecurities, director freakouts and studio pushback.

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Himesh Patel, who stars as the first assistant director in The Franchise , teased that in real-life sets “can sometimes be more chaotic” than what is being shown in the series and noted that although superhero movies are at the center of the story, the jokes aren’t aimed just at them. “What we’re talking about is the big movies, and when they get out of hand because you’re making a movie to print a check and not making it for the love of the movie,” he said.

Patel added that he was particularly drawn to the project for the focus on the crews, as “I’ve spent half my life on film sets and TV sets, and I’ve worked with countless crews; they’re all amazing at what they do, and they’re all there because they care, and they don’t get to do this sort of thing [on the red carpet], don’t get to have their name in lights.”

Billy Magnussen, who plays the superhero film’s lead actor, echoed, “I think the most exciting part is to celebrate the unsung heroes of the film industry and be a part of that story and also highlight the absurdity of us all in this industry where we sometimes take ourselves too serious. To laugh at it and poke at it and punch up a little bit, it’s nice. It’s refreshing, no one is untouchable.”

The Franchise, which also stars Aya Cash, Jessica Hynes and Lolly Adefope, premieres on HBO on Sunday.

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