The Rise of Skywalker and Loki.) The first season’s eight episodes feel neither defensive nor score-settling, the rare satire that can be enjoyed by fans and haters alike. The lack of firsthand knowledge doesn’t make The Franchise feel generic.

All that’s before we come onto dwindling box office, hostile crew, neurotic talent, ambulance-chasing press, VFX artists going postal, and Martin Scorsese issuing edicts that movies like Tecto are destroying moviemaking, while everybody involved is just trying to get through their 27-hour day and complete the paperwork on their divorce.

Himesh Patel leads the comedy produced by Armando Iannucci and Sam Mendes, set behind the scenes of a big-budget comic book adaptation.

And it’s the main thing differentiating “The Franchise,” HBO’s latest sendup of the entertainment industry, from all the other satires about superhero movies, Hollywood and the crass commercialization of art.

The Franchise answers the question of whether superhero films are killing cinema with a resounding yes right off the bat, sending up everything from convoluted cinematic universes

The new HBO series “The Franchise” satirizes the making of a superhero movie by a fictional movie studio that is Marvel in all but name. (The actual fictional name is Maximum Studios.) Warner Bros. Discovery,

The Franchise is a smart, appropriately silly takedown of the Marvel-ification of Hollywood. The new series premieres Sunday, October 6 on HBO.The Latest Tech News, Delivered to Your Inbox

HBO’s The Franchise may forever alter the way you experience a big-budget, IP-driven movie, by revealing just how silly it can be to film such an overblown spectacle. Premiering this Sunday, Oct.6 at 10/9c and counting two-time James Bond movie director Sam Mendes among its executive producers,