Is it possible to world build a franchise that's originally based around 1 hero?

[blackdragon6]

Reason I ask is because I see franchises wanting to world build after having a central protagonist for so long. Resulting in people just asking where's master chief, Jedi, or whoever instead of being interested in the rest of the world, Or the "new guys". Partly why I think some hated the star wars EU. I guess my question is this, is it too little too late to world build a franchise that's relied on a singular bad ass protagonist for most of the franchise's existence?​

 

[Milk Tray Guy]

With an extremely popular original lead figure I think questions like that are inevitable - at least until the new direction finds its feet. But if the storytelling, casting, and production is strong I can't see why it couldn't work. On TV the original X-Files continued in the main without Mulder (although he did put in a very occasional appearance), and the detective series Taggart ran for many years after the central lead character (and actor IRL) died. Audiences can come around.

 

[Breogan]

Is it possible to world build a franchise that's originally based around 1 hero?

...Reason I ask is because I see franchises wanting to world build after having a central protagonist for so long. Resulting in people just asking where's master chief, Jedi, or whoever instead of being interested in the rest of the world, Or the "new guys". Partly why I think some hated the star wars EU.

I don't think Star Wars built around just "1 hero"?
Sure there is a main story arc through Luke, but there was definitely a main trio of heroes, add Lando and a fourth, with secondary characters well loved, even minor Rebels getting expanded stories. . Plus Obi-Wan, Yoda and the idea of all the past Jedi was very expansive universe building.
Their expanded U. built and focused on all of that, into literature and games, and although Luke was a huge part of it, and was the focus of many ongoing stories, it was always much more than just Luke.

So not sure how you are making the comparison there to a 1 hero franchise?
Seems the opposite of what you say.

Partly why I think some hated the star wars EU.

Obviously it was loved, it went on for decades, ever expanding, until Disney ended it and rebooted.

 

[Breogan]

Re: Is it possible to world build a franchise that's originally based around 1 hero?

Is it possible? Absolutely! But yeah the spin-off characters and world building started early on and grew exponentially.
Great examples are:

Superman:
-Supergirl, had her own comics, movie and TV series
-Legion of Superheroes, spun out of Superboy, had comics, their own cartoon, and potential spin-off TV (see current Supergirl)
-Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen both had their own ongoing comics.
-Steel had his own comics, and movie.
-Krypto the Superdog had his own back up stories, and his own cartoon

Batman:
-Batman Family of comics
-Batgirl, comic, TV(Birds of Prey
-Huntress, own comic, with Batgirl spun out into TV Birds of Prey.
-Robin in comics and several animated series (sans Batman)
-Catwoman, comics, movie.
-Nightwing, comics.
-Gotham Girls, comics, animated web-series.
-Mystery of the Batwoman Animated movie
-Jason Todd, comics, animated movie under the Red Hood.
-Damian Wayne, comics, animated movie Son of Batman
-Gotham PD, comic, TV series.
-Harley Quin, comics, cartoons, upcoming film, with several other Bat sirens.
-Spinoff characters with their own comic, to many to list.

For a character who has been solo "for most of the franchise's existence", doesn't seem easy.
If there weren't characters or broader concepts developed to even spinoff, not sure why you'd even want to?

James Bond has a pretty well developed world, although focused on one character, the premise is strong enough, if done well you could suddenly focus on on an all new agent.
Not sure who would want that though? There is plenty of unique secret agent characters out there.

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

Yeah I don't get the SW EU comparison either given all the material produced that didn't have Luke in it at all.

 

[Fincher]

Part of the problem with someone like Indiana Jones is that there's not really a world there to speak of. It's basically our world, but exaggerating ancient tombs and where sometimes something mystical thing happens. You could maybe make a movie about his child following in his footsteps, but making some other random archaeologist in that continuity doesn't do anything that something like The Mummy from the '90s doesn't do. The more of a detailed mythos you have to work with, the more you can appeal to people through that mythos and overcome the cultural inertia that so-and-so is the hero.

It also can help to establish the new character in works that revolve around the previous character so that they can become popular before they branch off on their own. And it can help if you're working in a medium with low overhead, because if they don't hit it off right away, you can keep pumping them out for cheap and built a fanbase over time. I imagine it's a lot easier to do that with literary characters than movie characters, because if a movie spinoff gets a tepid response, no one's going to want to invest in it again. If a TV spinoff doesn't work, it gets cancelled, and that's it.

Conan the Barbarian --> Red Sonja demonstrates that it's possible under the right circumstances.

 

[Breogan]

Part of the problem with someone like Indiana Jones is that there's not really a world there to speak of. It's basically our world, but exaggerating ancient tombs and where sometimes something mystical thing happens. You could maybe make a movie about his child following in his footsteps, but making some other random archaeologist in that continuity doesn't do anything ...

I honestly think Indiana Jones has been, and may still be ripe for some world-building, and expanding tales, but I'm an easy marc as I'm a huge fan of the world, setting and themes created for the franchise.

As far as well established rival, it was Belloqu, although he was the villain - "So once again, Jones, what was briefly yours is now mine."
A prequal focusing on Belloq, and the rivalry from his POV, as a novel or comic, I'd certainly read them. Not sure a movie would work for the general audience though.

As for companion characters, obviously Ravenwood, with a young Marion in tow, I actually think that would be great, again I doubt the general audience would byte though.

Even Marcus Brody's somewhat bumbling fish out of water previous adventure would be fun for me, speaking on the Ark. he says to Jones, in his younger years he would have gone after it himself.
Yet again, that's not a movie, this would be a hard sell to a general audience, even as a novel or comic mini.

Likely the strongest sell, would be a young actor playing a young Henry Jones (Connery's character), maybe him teamed up with the younger Marcus.
They'd have a very different moore bookish analytical approach and tone to the adventure, so it wouldn't feel like a rehash. And could be fun.

You could maybe make a movie about his child following in his footsteps, but making some other random archaeologist in that continuity doesn't do anything ...

As to a sequel descendant character, they really dropped the ball with the completely uninteresting Mutt character, especially the fact that Jones didn't know he existed.
They should have set up a young rival archaeologist, beating the aging Jones at his own game, to every find.
Even implying they may be working with the villain.
Of course Marion (in the end) would similarly have revealed that's your kid, don't you recognize yourself in (her). Yeah I would have made it a young woman.
The setup if they wanted a new rival and sequel character would be established.

Although, most of this would likely make casual fans grown, and be of little to no interest to the general audience.
For me, it really would depend on how it was approached, and pitched.
But the set up and potential world building is all there.

 

[NHawk19]

The Potter-verse is doing just that now. They've taken a character who wrote a book in their universe, and now started expanding based on his adventures. Newt Scamander's second film is coming out this fall and its set before the Harry Potter events.

Original content, and a story people care about. Dumbledore is the only tie-in other than mentions of Hogwarts and the rules of the universe. So it can be done you need a compelling story and to play by the rules of that Universe.

 

[DrCosmic]

It absolutely depends on the franchise. If the story of the singular hero is about them entering a new and fantastic world then it's not just possible to expand a universe from there, it's easy. Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc, all very doable. There are some exceptions, such as if your expansive new fantastic world explicitly revolves around your singular hero, like The Matrix, but for the most part, this can be very easy, and has been done many times.

The challenge comes when the hero enters a world that isn't that large or fantastic or new. Indiana Jones is a world of incredibly powerful ancient artifacts, but trying to expand it beyond human history and Indy himself in The Crystal Skull gained opposition, because it didn't deliver on the motifs of the Indy "Universe." It could expand in a more Mummy direction, sure, but beyond that... it's limited in the exact same way Lara Croft and Drake's Uncharted are limited. Scope. If we're to believe it's in the same world as Indy, it can't be much broader than Indy's world. Fast and Furious managed to do some really awesome things slowly broadening the scope of their films, but they can't just throw in aliens without alienating people and even now people complain that it's not racing anymore... because that's the foundation, the world. Something like Avatar has a similar issue in terms of scope.

A lot of times nowadays we compare franchises to superhero universes, which are essentially all-encompassing in scope. It's a medium, not a genre, and thereby its everything, even though it's assumed to be a genre. It's a pretty interesting loophole that is unique to Marvel and DC.

There are some franchises that really should have expanded by now. If I had control of James Bond I would have cast Idris as 004 YEARS ago and given him his own spinoff. And while I'm at it, Blunt would have totally had her own spy megafranchise. There's quite a bit of scope there too since the gadgets are five minutes into the future, and you've got all of world politics to muck about with, you can play with a lot.

I would have backdoored White House Down into a Die Hard film connecting them to the same universe with a post credits scene. Call it The Cinematic Terrorism Universe, lol.

 

[Milk Tray Guy]

It would be interesting to see how any DCEU Bat-Family movies were to be received by GAs if Batman wasn't in them. For the Nightwing and Batgirl solos would there be cries of 'But where's Batman?', 'I thought Batman would be in this' - even if they were very good/excellent movies in their own right? Doubt if we'll ever get to find out as I can see Batman at least cameoing in both, but it would have been interesting.

 

[blackdragon6]

I don't think Star Wars built around just "1 hero"?

Of course, I was generally speaking. It can be a central group of characters as well. Also plenty of Star Wars fans don't consider the EU cannon. When it comes to the videogame medium i've seen games like Gears of War try to expand, and use new characters in new stories. But a lot of people hated the non delta squad characters. Same thing happened to Halo 5

 

[boocherhix]

John Wick.

 

[KevanG]

Sure but you also need to expand on the world the character lives in and that usually means they need an expanding cast to keep it from being just about one person. You can easily start a series about one person in the beginning but people get curious about things like 'What happened to Character X before the show started' or 'How did Event Y make the main character like they are?' Look at Breaking Bad. It originally was just Walt doing his thing then it expanded into Jesse then Walt's family and so on. Even after the show ended we still got a spin off.

Basically, you can start off with one person but to keep things interesting you need to expand beyond that and that usually leads to the series going beyond what was originally envisioned.

Here's a personal example: My book series is about one guy and his life. In order to understand how his past ended up with his present, I started writing about different things that happened. Sometimes I wrote things about the world he lived in that only had the barest connection to him just to get an idea of how the rest of the planet functioned when the 'camera' wasn't focused on him. I've also tried to understand his father and his reasons for what happened which lead me into writing a novella detailing his life from his teens until a few years before the start of the series.

I've found that just focusing on one person can get tedious if that's all there is to it.

 

[Madam-Shogun]

It only works if you don't try to add new characters and ideas into the mainline titles. That's where the problems arise. Trying to push beloved established characters aside to introduce new ideas and plots. Angel worked cause it wasn't stepping on Buffy's toes. Locke didn't work as a spartan cause fans saw him as a character taking time and space away from Master Chief. Frankly 343i screwed over Locke as a character, by basically setting him up to fail.

 

[Madam-Shogun]

Of course, I was generally speaking. It can be a central group of characters as well. Also plenty of Star Wars fans don't consider the EU cannon.

The new Disney Star Wars EU is canon though, whether fans like it or not.

 

[Jenocide]

What about James Bond? Or is his world to close to our own to count?

 

[C. Lee]

What about James Bond? Or is his world to close to our own to count?

DrCosmic in post #9 above mentions an idea on the Bond series.

 

[Jenocide]

Guess I shouldn't skim.


My bad.