Some of the most expensive movies made today are produced in environments far more chaotic than what many would expect when billions of dollars are on the line, according to Hollywood insiders.
When creating the new HBO show "The Franchise," a satire based on the production of superhero movies, the show's creators spoke with many who helped make films for DC and Marvel.
What they found was that blockbuster movie franchises are "absurd, chaotic, and decisions are made for the most random of reasons," show co-creator and Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes told The Hollywood Reporter.
Alongside Jon Brown of "Succession" and Armando Iannucci of "Veep," Mendes and writers for "The Franchise" found that their colleagues faced challenges like scenes being pieced together with dialogue from eight different versions of the same script and entirely new scenes and characters being added mid-production as a new actor is hired.
In one of the more extreme examples, a director working on a superhero movie slowly came to realize that what they were working on was destined for the cutting-room floor, as the "real" film was being made elsewhere.
As Brown told the Reporter, these anecdotes were often used in the writing process for "The Franchise," but sometimes, they had to be toned down so the audience wouldn't dismiss the plot as unbelievable.
"You think, ‘I know this is real, but it just seems too silly,’” Brown explained. “So we sometimes have to take it back a step, because you don’t think people will believe it unless they know it’s true.”
"The Franchise" debuts on Oct. 6, according to Variety.