Eric Kripke has had major success with his “The Boys” series on Amazon Prime, a series that combines both episodic stories and serialised elements and is notable for bringing something often shocking to the table with each episode.
Kripke isn’t a film auteur wading into television, rather he is mostly known as a strong genre producer who rose to fame creating and running the first five seasons of The CW’s beloved cult hit cornerstone “Supernatural”. He then went to NBC where he ran both “Revolution” and the well-received “Timeless” before segueing to “The Boys”.
Speaking to Vulture, Kripke has made it clear he will never go back to the grind of broadcast TV and is all about streaming. Explaining why he says:
“I can’t see ever going back to network. It’s the ability to do two things: have most of your scripts written before you shoot a day of film, and then have all the episodes finished before you turn them over to air.
There are logistical benefits that would be impossible to give up because you can tell a coherent piece in a way you simply cannot with network TV. It’s already aired; you threw it out the door. You’re locked in. It happens all the time: We’re in the middle of filming episode seven, and we realize there’s a different storyline we need. We still have time to go back and shoot it for episode one and drop it back in.”
There are also some annoyances he has about streaming. One is an increasingly common statement heard in interviews where producers and actors refer to their series as ‘a 6-10 hour movie’ with shows like “Obi-Wan Kenobi” recent described that way. Kripke talks his frustration over that designation and those peddling it:
“The downside of streaming is that a lot of filmmakers who work in streaming didn’t necessarily come out of that network grind. They’re more comfortable with the idea that they could give you ten hours, where nothing happens until the eighth hour. That drives me f–king nuts, personally.
As a network guy who had to get you people interested for 22 f—king hours a year, I didn’t get the benefit of, ‘Oh, just hang in there and don’t worry. The critics will tell you that by episode eight, s–t really hits the fan.’ Or anyone who says, ‘Well, what I’m really making is a 10-hour movie.’ F–k you! No, you’re not! Make a TV show. You’re in the entertainment business.”
“The Boys” recently concluded its third season and has already been renewed for a fourth which begins production next month.
