We know all about “Superhero Fatigue” here at Last Movie Outpost. It is an often repeated conversation in our Disqus, among our Outposters. Outposters who are, we recognize, superior online movie and entertainment beings. Digital superheroes. It’s like poetry, it rhymes.
HBO and Max Content CEO Casey Bloys has a bit more of a nuanced view of this and, on reflection, he may be on to something. Doing publicity for the 2024 and 2025 programming schedule on the platforms he was asked about superhero fatigue and he says he thinks the real issue is fatigue with, as he calls it, the “sameness of storytelling”.
With their DC content, he wants to keep things interesting by not being afraid to shake up the approach, as opposed to their lately more successful rival who fits things into a certain template:
“I think the key, even within DC, is trying to tell different stories in different styles, to not try to do the same show over and over and over again.
I would say Peacemaker is a very different show tonally than The Penguin. So, there’s not a uniformity to the storytelling and I think that helps.
Unfortunately, Marvel, as good as their shows are, there’s probably been a lot of them. That’s one of the advantages we have at Warner Bros. is it’s not just one set of stories. There’s a lot of stories you can go to.”
The Penguin is a spin-off from The Batman, which is now confirmed as an Elseworlds story. A sequel to that is supposedly on the cards following the spin-off show. IT, Dune, and Crazy Rich Asians are also getting spin-off shows. So not all a completely new world of variety in approach, eh Casey?
If he is right, and it’s not quite superhero fatigue but storytelling fatigue, then the time might be right for the DCU to step forward just as Marvel falters. To do that, it might have to be brave, but too brave and the fanboys will reject it. It’s a fine line.
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