Masters of the universes

and Peter Safran are building on its progress with properties like Peacemaker

WBD is drawing on a vast treasure trove of IP that also includes the rapidly expanding Harry Potter ‘Wizarding World’ (for which several TV series are in development) and Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon being the first in a string of intended successors. Speaking of which, even Succession creator Jesse Armstrong is said to be considering spin-offs of the award-winning HBO drama, which is ending with its recently launched fourth season.

Over at Paramount – four years into its creation following the US$15.4bn merger of CBS and Viacom – the studio that houses sci-fi behemoth Star Trek, archetypal TV franchise architect Dick Wolf (Law & Order, Chicago, FBI) and similarly iterative procedurals CSI and NCIS – is doubling down its own universe-building strategy with Westerns Yellowstone, 1883, 1923 and more. Meanwhile, series including Billions and Dexter (already given the sequel treatment two years ago) will get their own spin-offs as premium cablenet Showtime gets folded into Paramount+ later this year.

Elsewhere, following the conclusion of The Walking Dead on AMC last year after 11 seasons, the blockbuster apocalyptic thriller has already racked up six spin-offs including Fear the Walking Dead and has two due out in 2023. New gothic horror franchise Immortal Universe appears to also be doing well but AMC is, like others, cutting budgets. At Starz, Courtney A Kemp and Curtis ‘50 Cent’ Jackson’s Power universe has run to six seasons of the original series and to date spawned three spin-offs, with Ghost and Raising Kanan each getting multiple orders. But Jackson’s deal with the company has now ended and the rapper has signed with Fox.

The mega-merger activity among the US studios in recent years has been a response to the rise of streaming, and the valuations placed on such deals reflect the assumed worth of assets wrapped up in them plus future potential. The subsequent process of rationalisation and value realisation inevitably involves a concentration on those assets – a focus sharpened by economic conditions that mean recognisable IP receives priority over investment in new properties.

And Hollywood is not alone, with global streamers backing established franchises or seeking to extend homegrown successes as they, too, feel the financial squeeze and seek to shore up audiences around fewer tentpole shows.

Amazon splashed out hundreds of millions of dollars for the right to make Lord of the Rings spinoff The Rings of Power, similarly more recently for the Tomb Raider franchise (for which it has enlisted Phoebe Waller-Bridge as series writer), plus US$8.5bn on James Bond and Rocky owner MGM. Amazon Prime Video and the new MGM+ will serve as homes to a suite of live-action series based on Marvel characters owned by Sony Pictures Television.

But Amazon is also fleshing out the world of homegrown originals like Bosch, with two more offshoots of the Michael Connolly cop drama in the works following last year’s Bosch: Legacy. It is also building a universe from scratch in the form of the Russo Brothers’ multi-series sci-fi spy drama Citadel, with the US instalment debuting in April followed by interlinked versions in Italy, Mexico and India.

Netflix, meanwhile, will in May release Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story – the first spin-off from Shonda Rhimes’ original historical drama, which itself is headed for a third season. Queen Charlotte is the inaugural block in “building out the Bridgerton universe,” according to Netflix head of global TV Bela Bajaria.

Of course, spinning off popular IP doesn’t guarantee success, as MCU’s Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania and DCU’s Shazam! Fury of the Gods have demonstrated. Even TWDC CEO Bog Iger has suggested a need for more focus on quality over quantity. Some universes may yet contract but with Lucasfilm having signed Peaky Blinders scribe Steven Knight for its next movie, Star Wars isn’t one of them yet.

Liam Neeson

There’s so many spin-offs of Star Wars. It’s diluting it, to me, and it’s taken away the mystery and the magic, in a weird way.

Gunnar Wiedenfels, chief financial officer, Warner Bros Discovery

Take Harry Potter, the Wizarding World – the fact we’re enjoying massive success with the Hogwarts Legacy [game] launch 12 years after the last film came out shows there is so much opportunity and we’re only just starting to expand that. Coordinated franchise management is probably one of the biggest opportunities the company has.

Bob Bakish, CEO, Paramount

We’re leaning into our Showtime franchises. You could think of the slate as smaller, which will be less expensive, but also really giving the people what they want, which is more Showtime, maybe more Dexter, more Ray Donovan

Chris McCarthy, president & CEO, Paramount Media Networks

We’re partnering with our core creators, like Brian Koppelman and David Levien, who created Billions and will oversee the Billions universe. But we’ll also look to bring in other creatives to help build out those franchises and ideas. You could look at it as Dick Wolf in broadcast, Yellowstone in premium cable or Top Gun, Mission: Impossible and StarWars in theatrical film. The misconception is that franchises are easier, when in fact they’re a lot harder, because audiences have built-in expectations.

Dan McDermott, president of entertainment and AMC Studios, AMC Networks

It’s a truly exciting year for The Walking Dead universe as we conclude an epic journey on Fear the Walking Dead, and now we are set to bring forth the next iteration of the franchise – two new and anticipated series. Fans new and old will love seeing zombies walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, beneath the Eiffel Tower, inside the Louvre, and at dozens more exotic and iconic locations from around the country and world.

Gaurav Gandhi, VP, Amazon Prime Video India

The Citadel universe is a truly innovative and ambitious approach to storytelling. With this project, we are building on our mission of borderless entertainment to produce local original content that can be enjoyed by audiences across the world. Citadel is a truly global franchise.

Bob Iger, CEO, The Walt Disney Company

Because the streaming platforms require so much volume, one has to question whether that’s the right direction to go, or if you can be more curated, more picky about what you’re making, and to concentrate on quality and not volume.

Artificial Intelligence has been a fascination of film and TV since the industry’s inception, from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis through to modern classics like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, James Cameron’s Terminator, Steven Spielberg’s AI and many more, including last year’s Blumhouse horror M3gan

In TV, HBO’s Westworld, Channel 4 and AMC Networks’ Humans, CBS’s Person of Interest and AppleTV+’s Severance are a handful of series that have explored AI recently, with most of these titles giving the technology a distinctly dystopian billing. Indeed, aside from aliens, the entire sciencefiction canon would scarcely exist were it not for the idea of some megalomaniacal computer programme or robot bearing down on humanity.

AI, however, is no longer fiction and, rather than being merely the subject of film and TV fantasy, is being actively used within the industry in myriad ways, not only in VFX but also in content creation. AI tools like those offered by New York-based Runway can bring huge efficiencies to many mundane production tasks, with the firm highlighting how these were used in the making of Oscar winner Everything Everywhere All at Once to remove the need for rotoscoping. It also lists CBS as a client and holds up The Late Show with Stephen Colbert as a case study in which a five-hour video edit was reduced to just five minutes.

But Runway is also advancing a new category called ‘generative media.’ As with AI chatbots, like