{"id":648208,"date":"2026-06-20T02:19:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T02:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/648208\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T02:19:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T02:19:12","slug":"supergirl-gets-buzz-netflix-knifes-the-duffer-brothers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/648208\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Supergirl’ Gets Buzz, Netflix Knifes The Duffer Brothers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tLOSER: The Duffer Brothers<\/a>: First, the final season of Stranger Things \u2014 a massive ratings success that it was \u2014 was pretty roundly knocked for being an exposition-stuffed slog. Now Matt and Ross Duffer\u2019s spiritual successor series, Netflix<\/a>\u2018s \u201cStranger Things with seniors\u201d drama The Boroughs, was canceled just one month after its premiere<\/a>, which seems \u2026 rather aggressive considering the Duffers created the biggest show in the streamer\u2019s history in total hours viewed and were almost certainly responsible for driving more subscribers to the company than any other creative team.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso, the streamer\u2019s executives frequently take their sweet time to make such decisions, especially when a series has a 97 percent positive Rotten Tomatoes\u2019 critics score and a 79 percent audience score. Sources close to the decision point to the show\u2019s somewhat modest ratings versus the show\u2019s high production cost.\u00a0Fair enough, but it\u2019s difficult to imagine Netflix executing this rug-pull if the Duffers hadn\u2019t jumped ship to Paramount.<\/p>\n

\n\tHere\u2019s what\u2019s funny about this: Netflix could have waited two more days to try and bury the cancellation news right before the holiday weekend \u2014 as studios famously do when wanting to protect the feelings of talent (an insider cites a deadline<\/a> to extend the cast\u2019s options as a reason for the decision\u2019s timing, but the company likely could have hustled to keep the news under wraps for another 48 hours). Instead, Netflix knifed The Boroughs two days after Paramount announced<\/a> its \u201cMystery Event Movie\u201d with the Duffers, blowing those positive Duffer Brothers headlines out of the water. Guess that $2.8 billion fee Paramount paid Netflix after their merger collapsed didn\u2019t buy any warm feelings. In both cases, Netflix doesn\u2019t seem to handle break-ups particularly well (\u201cMatt and Ross, I thought we having a nice date!\u201d). It\u2019s unclear if Netflix\u2019s cancellation timing was intended as a double middle finger salute to the Duffers and Paramount but \u2026 stranger things have happened.<\/p>\n

\n\tWINNER: Supergirl<\/a>: I\u2019ve been critical of \u201cfirst social media reactions\u201d stories, even though I write them too (the entertainment news beast must be fed). It would be highly amusing if, just once, the usual gaggle of fan bloggers, exuberant critics, and influencers all collectively agreed to roast an expensive major franchise release \u2014 preferably a film that\u2019s mediocre, but not outright bad. Just imagine them executing a Spartacus-style uprising, biting the hand that feeds like Krypto the super-pup, collectively declaring to Hollywood: We are not your simps. It would scare the bejesus out of every studio\u2019s marketing department.<\/p>\n

\n\tYesterday, however, was not that day. Supergirl enjoyed plenty of glowing first reactions<\/a> (\u201cthe best blockbuster of the summer!\u201d), with Jason Momoa particularly drawing praise as Lobo (a role he was \u201cborn to play,\u201d several enthused). Influencers comparing the film to the best action movie this century, Mad Max: Fury Road, are getting rather sacrilegious (though I get that the comparison serves as an easy shorthand for a film that\u2019s a non-stop chase). The social media embargo was actually moved up by several days amid reports of the film\u2019s opening weekend tracking softening, which just goes to show how much these reactions have become a reliable extension of marketing. <\/p>\n

\n\tLOSER: Franchises: Nobody seriously believes franchises are dying. Franchises are stories people like and people will continue to like the things that they like. That said, what\u2019s happening this year at the box office has been fascinating and does feel like a real shift \u2014 or, at least, the opportunity for a real shift.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s partly because of some IP that slightly underperformed (Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, Mortal Kombat II), or really underperformed (Masters of the Universe, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple), but mostly because the raging success of non-IP films (Backrooms, Obsession, Project Hail Mary, Michael, The Sheep Detectives) continue a \u201clook people still like original films\u201d trend that sparked last summer with Weapons and Sinners.\u00a0So far this year, only half of the Top 10 domestic box office performers are existing IP, whereas last year 12 of the top 13 movies were existing IP (Sinners the sole exception).<\/p>\n

\n\tLook, Toy Story 5 and Spider-Man: Brand New Day are still going to crush. Avengers: Doomsday will be the biggest movie released this year. But it feels like studio executives now have some real cover to greenlight on-the-bubble original ideas that might not have stood a chance just one year ago. As Obsession director Curry Barker put it in this week\u2019s cover interview<\/a> when I asked what Gen Z audiences want: \u201cI wish [studios] understood that we\u2019re tired of slop. We want good movies back. People are still hungry for movies that are original without some big IP, as long as the story is good.\u201d That may sound like a young filmmaker\u2019s idealism, but it\u2019s actually tough to argue against given what we\u2019ve seen this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWINNER: Christopher Nolan: Speaking of original IP (or, in this case, 2,700-year-old IP), it\u2019s not often a movie sets a record a month before its release. BFI Imax \u2014 the U.K.\u2019s largest movie screen \u2014 sold a record 28,000 tickets for The Odyssey in 24 hours. Those numbers doubled the previous record-holder, Dune: Part Two. It\u2019s not surprising given The Odyssey broke records in the U.S. when certain premium large format theater tickets were put on sale a full year before the movie\u2019s release (which was just silly). Nolan and Universal have done an impressive and relentless job pushing The Odyssey as a movie you absolutely must watch in Imax or you might as well see it as your Delta in-flight movie on the back of somebody\u2019s seat if you dare watch it in, you know, Dolby Cinema or something. Also notice how The Odyssey\u2018s dumb-controversy<\/a> critics have gone blissfully silent. Now just stay like that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOSER: The Duffer Brothers: First, the final season of Stranger Things \u2014 a massive ratings success that it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,392,9409,88648,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-648208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-netflix","tag-supergirl","tag-the-duffer-brothers","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}