Easy Cash4ads»
The Boys
I’m all for a good social media beef between megacorporations, and this time, Amazon is waging comedy war through a proxy…fictional megacorporation, Vought International, the evil conglomerate from The Boys.
Vought has no direct real-life analogue, but it has a finger in every pie in the universe. Previously, back in August of 2022, the Vought account poked fun at media consolidation, saying that its streaming apps VTV+, VNN+ and VSN+ were being merged into Vought+, which would become Vought++
But now? There’s a different joke they’re making, this time directly at Warner Bros. Discover and HBO Max’s expense:
“To begin 2023, we’re proud to unveil the most effective restructuring in entertainment history. Vought++ is now Vought+ again! We’ve unbundled your favorite apps like VTV+ and VSPN+, and eliminated 35% of our films. All for the new low price of $119/month, plus!”
The joke being that after its merger, WB/HBO Max has been not just cancelling series and even deleting finished projects like the Batgirl movie, but they are actively ripping down content from its library, dozens of movies and even recent shows like Raised by Wolves and Westworld, in order to take tax writedowns and avoid paying royalties. It’s a somewhat unprecedented situation in the streaming era. All the while subscription prices are not being lowered, and it feels like everyone is getting less for their money than ever before.
As another streaming service, is Amazon actually in a position to poke fun here? I mean, kind of, yes. I would say that out of all the major streaming services, Amazon probably pulls the least amount of shenanigans when it comes to shocking cancelations and I haven’t heard them doing anything like scrapping greenlit future seasons or outright removing content from their library. Not to say they never will, but for now, yeah, they sort of have license to dunk on HBO Max here. Really everyone should be, because this practice is gross and sacrifices creative work in a brutal fashion for the sake of the bottom line. Creators and audiences cannot thrive while practices like this become standard.
Amazon, meanwhile, still struggles to find truly major hits on the level of HBO or Netflix, though they’ve had some successes recently with The Boys, Reacher and The Terminal List. The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power was widely watched, at least, if not terribly beloved.
As for The Boys, its spin-off, Generation V, is supposed to be out some time in 2023, with filming having wrapped this past fall. The Boys season 4 will air after that, likely in later 2023 or early 2024.
Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to my free weekly content round-up newsletter, God Rolls.
Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.