The Valiant Cinematic Universe isn’t even technically a thing, but the would-be franchise’s brief history is fascinating nonetheless. Valiant chief Dan Mintz said shortly after the release of Bloodshot that he wanted to draw his inspirations from Wesley Snipes’ Blade and not Jon Favreau’s Iron Man, in terms of launching a comic book brand with a harder edge.
Earlier this year, co-writer Eric Heisserer admitted the planned VCU may still happen eventually, but a lot transpired between March 2020 and his comments the following April. Vin Diesel‘s stab at a live-action superhero role hit theaters just as the Coronavirus pandemic emerged, and it didn’t even manage to recoup the $45 million budget before being shuffled onto VOD in an attempt to reclaim some of those lost earnings.
Shortly after that, there was talk that the entire property was set to be rebooted in double quick time with the Fast & Furious talisman being dropped, only for the chrome-domed action icon himself to reveal last November that he was sticking around to develop a sequel, because everyone knows Diesel will not rest until he turns everything he touches into a multi-film series.
The actor teased big news last December that never materialized, and while fans wait to discover whether or not that sequel is actually going to happen, Bloodshot continues to enjoy plenty of popularity among Netflix subscribers. Having troubled the Top 10 most-watched list several times already, it’s now poised to do it again given that it’s in thirteenth position at the time of writing. It has to be viewed as one of the most painfully mediocre efforts the genre has seen in a long time, though, but streaming audiences definitely seem to dig it.