I got some interesting poll results from Weekly Ride subscribers a couple weeks ago. Here is the question as I posed it:

Which SFF IP Needs to Take an Extended Break in Hollywood?

Game of Thrones/ASoIaF

Star Wars

Marvel Cinematic Universe

DC Universe

Harry Potter

DC Universe was our outlier here, without a single vote, but the rest of the readership was pretty evenly divided in their fatigue. Here are the results:

I agree with the hivemind. I think Hollywood needs to take a seat with all of these properties and have a good long think about how they managed to spoil such rich IP. 

Kevin Feige had a good run with the MCU, but that’s gotta be the most saturated IP on the list. Ironically, I think Marvel Studios has done some of its most interesting work since Avengers: Endgame (Shang-Chi, WandaVision, Loki), but also some of its worst (The Eternals, She-Hulk). Either way, everyone is too fatigued to really care. 

I’m more of a Disney apologist than I am a Disney hater, but I will not say a single good word about the way the Mouse has handled Star Wars. What a disaster.

As for GoT, I could write a whole essay about the bad writing churned out by D&D after they ran out of source material to adapt. Brian Cogman seems to be a better scribe, but House of Dragon lost me a few episodes into season 2. Knight of the Seven Kingdoms looks good, and I suspect it will do well with its lighter tone, but HBO has made the same mistake they made with GoT. The Dunk & Egg novellas that the show is adapted from are unfinished. Martin has published three of a planned seven. They are going to run out of source material again, and you don’t need a dram of king’s blood to predict how that’s going to turn out in the hands of TV writers.

I loved Harry Potter growing up, but it’s too soon for a remake. The films are largely definitive and really not that old. This new TV series feels like a shameless cash grab. Depressingly, it will probably work.