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Film, TV and Streaming

In pop culture, knowing when to pull the plug on a show or franchise

Arnold Schwarzenegger arrives at the LA Premiere of “Terminator Genisys” at Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

In an interesting story in the Hollywood Reporter last week, Pamela McClintock took a look at the calculations that studios make as they consider whether or not to keep ongoing franchises alive, pegged to the latest installment of the “Terminator” movies.

“He’ll be back. Or will he? In September 2014, David Ellison’s Skydance Productions and Paramount boldly dated the next two installments in the rebooted Terminator franchise for 2017 and 2018, even though the first film in the planned trilogy, ‘Terminator: Genisys,’ was 10 months from opening. But now ‘Genisys,’ which cost $155 million to produce and tens of millions more to market, is underperforming at the box office - it had earned only $80.6 million domestically and nearly $200 million overseas as of July 19 - underscoring the tough decisions franchise-mad studios face with what might be called ‘bubble’ movies, decent performers whose returns don’t trigger an automatic sequel but whose backers aren’t quite ready to give up.”

Money is one reason to shut a franchise down, or at least put it on hold for a while. But there are other reasons to quit. Take Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, who have announced that their Comedy Central show, “Key & Peele,” will end its run after five seasons, though it will hardly be the end of their collaborations.

“This is our final season — and it’s not because of Comedy Central, it’s us,” Key told the Wrap’s Steve Pond. “It was just time for us to explore other things, together and apart. I compare it to Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. We might make a movie and then do our own thing for three years and then come back and do another movie. I’m thinking we could do that every three years — take a year, go bang out a movie. That’s the plan right now ...There will be Key & Peele productions coming up. We’re doing the reboot of ‘Police Academy,’ and there’s a TV show in the works that me might do for Comedy Central. There’s lots of stuff we have cooking up.”

This, to me, seems to be the essence of whether a franchise or brand is worth continuing. Are there new things you can do with the core players? Is the world big enough to accommodate new characters, new settings, and new conflicts?

“Mad Max: Fury Road” was a success not just because George Miller’s 1979 concept hasn’t been done to death in the years since, but because Miller himself was willing to be flexible and expansive. “Fury Road” didn’t lose the car chases and desert landscapes that had been a hallmark of the series. But Miller was willing to turn his titular creation (played here by Tom Hardy) into a supporting character, rather than the lead, letting him be supplanted by Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), a woman trying to repent for her service to a vicious dictator. And Miller proved himself curious enough to expand his storytelling into a new set of communities and social institutions.

The “Star Wars” prequels, by contrast, had plenty of flaws, including moderately racist alien sidekicks and some truly awful casting. But significant among the movies’ problems was the decision to stick close to some of the same characters and institutions we were familiar with from the original movies. The Force, George Lucas’ mystical creation, is a fine invention, but explaining midi-chlorians took away a fair bit of the awe that surrounded the Jedi. And the prequels did almost nothing with the new institutions the movies introduced, including the Galactic Senate.

Fortunately, it seems that Disney is trying to achieve a greater balance in its next round of “Star Wars” movies. An installment like “The Force Awakens” seems like it’ll be focused on the resurgence of the Jedi, while a spinoff like “Rogue One” will take us further afield, focusing on characters who aren’t either Jedi Knights or linked to them. The galaxy Lucas created in “Star Wars” is full of rich storytelling possibilities and thousands of potential settings. If Disney can find a way to grow into all that potential, then it’ll be creatively worthwhile for the franchise to continue.

Marvel is currently attempting the same pivot, introducing a new character in “Ant-Man,” (Paul Rudd) and also using him to build out an existing hero, Falcon (Anthony Mackie), who previously was relegated to sidekick status. Whether Marvel can get audiences invested in new characters and new tones of storytelling, and can do it while releasing two movies a year rather than giving viewers a break in between installments, will be a big test.

Sometimes these kinds of shifts don’t work, of course: the second season of “True Detective” may be telling an entirely different story with entirely different characters, but the magnetism of the first season has reversed polarity. It’s become so dull that I almost forget that it’s still on. But the show, at least, is serving as a valuable reminder that no matter how much luster a name has acquired, showrunners and directors still have to figure out new and genuinely exciting ways to deliver the goods.



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