Zack Snyder has pointed to shows like Euphoria as he argues that modern TV can go to riskier places than film. Snyder is the director behind the DC “SnyderVerse” films and, more recently, Army of the Dead and the upcoming Rebel Moon. Euphoria is an HBO coming-of-age drama starring Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, Hunter Schafer, and Alexa Demie that focuses on a group of high school students as they navigate various taboos. Euphoria season 3 is expected to begin filming soon and has no current official release date.
Snyder recently appeared on the Pizza Film School podcast (via The Playlist) hosted by fellow directors Joe and Anthony Russo, who are behind such films as Avengers: Infinity War and The Gray Man. The trio discuss modern television, which Snyder addresses as being in its “golden age.”
He cites Euphoria and Korean Netflix thriller Squid Game as examples of shows that are perfect for the medium of television, and simply wouldn’t be made as feature films in the current Hollywood climate. Read on for Snyder’s full comment:
I think we’re in a real golden age of TV in the sense that TV shows are much better at showing you something that you’ve never seen before or catching you off balance or making a turn that you didn’t see coming…They’re way riskier. ‘Euphoria,’ for instance, I was just watching the show is just unbelievable. That show shouldn’t exist; it’s so good. And that’s the kind of thing I watch that show and go, ‘This movie would never get made; this movie can’t exist.’ You could imagine ‘Squid Games’ coming here as a movie would be an arthouse [thing], maybe. ‘Euphoria’ and ‘Squid Game’ take you to places where you have no idea where you are going or what’s happening, and I think that’s what people want.
Has TV Become More Exciting Than Movies?
Snyder notes that TV is currently in its “golden age” and is more willing to take risks than movies. This is a descriptor that has been around since the late ’90s and early ’00s, with such shows as The Sopranos and The Wire often mentioned as progenitors of the “golden age,” eventually passing the baton to titles including Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones. Streaming has altered the landscape of TV drastically, but there continues to be myriad series that explore the cinematic medium in ways that movies haven’t been able to.
Thematically, Euphoria and similar such shows are much darker and more shocking than most mainstream movies. Production studios are far less likely to greenlight movies considered “risky,” because profitability and reaching as wide an audience as possible is the primary motivation for studio movies. TV is generally cheaper to make and relies on ad revenue – and subscriber numbers in the case of streamers – so is therefore more flexible than movies in that regard. Moreover, popular networks including HBO can almost guarantee high viewing figures for their shows, so it is less of a risk for them to make more unique content.
Recent years have seen Hollywood swamped with franchises, with established IPs like the Marvel Cinematic Universe often dominating box office records. It is harder than ever for original movies to perform well financially. As a result of TV being able to be more daring over a longer format, and with so many great shows being released annually as more filmmakers move to the medium, there is a strong argument to be made that TV has become more exciting than movies in the modern day. Though Snyder didn’t suggest this, he affirmed that TV is inherently unpredictable, as seen with Euphoria, and that’s where the demand lies.
Source: Pizza Film School (via The Playlist)
