Zack Snyder have pointed to shows like Euphoria as he argues that modern television 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 future 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.

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Snyder recently appeared on Pizza Film School podcast (via The playlist) with fellow directors Joe and Anthony Russo, who are behind films such as Avengers: Infinity War and The gray man. The trio discuss modern television, which Snyder addresses as being in his “golden age.”

He quotes Euphoria and Korean Netflix thriller Play octopus as examples of shows perfect for the medium of television that simply wouldn’t be made into feature films in the current Hollywood climate. Read on for Snyder’s full comment:

I think we’re in a real golden age of television in the sense that television shows are much better at showing you something you’ve never seen before, or at catching you off balance or doing a twist that you didn’t see coming…They are far more risky. “Euphoria,” for example, I just saw the program is just incredible. 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 cannot exist.’ You could imagine ‘Squid Games’ coming here as a movie would be an art house [thing], maybe. ‘Euphoria’ and ‘Squid Game’ take you to places where you have no idea where you’re going or what’s going to happen, and I think that’s what people want.

Has TV become more exciting than movies?

Participants in the Squid Game

Snyder notes that TV is currently in its “golden age” and is more willing to take risks than movies. This is a description that has been around since the late ’90s and early ’00s, with shows like The sopranos and The thread often mentioned as ancestors of “golden age,” eventually passing the baton to titles including Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones. Streaming has changed the television landscape drastically, but there are still countless series that explore the cinematic medium in ways that movies haven’t been able to.

thematic, Euphoria and similar such shows are much darker and more shocking than most mainstream films. Production studios are far less likely to greenlight films that are considered “risky,“Because profitability and reaching as wide an audience as possible is the primary motivation for studio films. TV is generally cheaper to make and depends on ad revenue – and subscriber numbers in the case of streamers – so it’s therefore more flexible than film in that regard Also, popular networks, including HBO, can almost guarantee high ratings for their shows, so it’s less of a risk for them to make more unique content.

In recent years, Hollywood has been awash with franchises with established IPs like the Marvel Cinematic Universe often dominate box offices. It’s harder than ever for original movies to do well financially. As a result, TV can be more daring over a longer format, and with so many great shows being released annually as more filmmakers move to the medium, there’s a strong case to be made that TV has become more exciting than film in the modern day. Although Snyder didn’t suggest this, he confirmed that TV is inherently unpredictable, as seen with Euphoriaand that is where the demand lies.

Source: Pizza Film School (via The playlist)

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