Long gone are the days when being a ‘TV actor’ was viewed as inferior to those who starred in lavish big screen productions, and the age of Peak TV might be here to stay, given the volume of creative and financial investment still being funnelled into the small screen’s most high profile projects, while streaming exclusives for the likes of Netflix, HBO Max and Disney Plus boast budgets more than comparable to blockbuster movies.
With the Marvel Cinematic Universe expanding rapidly into long-form storytelling with fourteen episodic adventures in the works, and DC Films working on a huge number of shows based on the company’s roster of comic book characters, it wouldn’t be too harsh to say that the Arrowverse‘s days as television’s marquee superhero universe are numbered.
The CW’s sprawling mythology is still going strong, of course, but ratings are nowhere near what they used to be, with Batwoman‘s audience dropping by over 1.2 million between the first and second season premieres. Superman & Lois, meanwhile, got off to a good start with 1.75 million people checking out the first episode, but across the entire Arrowverse, the numbers have been trending downwards for years.
To that end, insider Daniel Richtman is now reporting that the network heads are reportedly pushing to increase the budgets for the Arrowverse’s lineup, in the hopes that an aesthetic more in keeping with both HBO Max’s content and the DCEU movies will help arrest the slide.
WarnerMedia only holds a 50% stake in The CW, with CBS owning the rest, so the two parties would probably have to come to some sort of agreement to splurge millions more dollars on the Arrowverse, but in any case, the decision likely rests on how the ratings fare over the coming television season.
