YouTuber and streamer Asmongold declared “We’re winning” in the wake of a report that admitted that Hollywood executives are “battling” fans.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MAY 23: Amandla Stenberg attends the launch event for Lucasfilm’s new Star Wars series The Acolyte at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California on May 23, 2024. (Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney)
Variety’s Adam B. Vary penned an article titled: “Toxic Fandom: How Hollywood Is Battling Fans Who Are ‘Just Out for Blood’ — From Social Media Boot Camps to Superfan Focus Groups.”
In the article, Vary cites an unnamed marketing executive who informed him, “It comes with the territory, but it’s gotten incredibly loud in the last couple years. People are just out for blood, regardless. They think the purity of the first version will never be replaced, or you’ve done something to upset the canon of a beloved franchise, and they’re going to take you down for doing so.”
Morfydd Clark as Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2024), Amazon MGM Studios
Asmongold reacted to this comment stating, “That’s exactly right. I’m glad they understand.”
He continued, “So the problem is that the fan base wants you to maintain what the original story was and not change the story.”
Next, Asmongold reacted to Vary’s claim that “toxic fandoms have grown so pernicious that they’ve become a fact of life for many — and so powerful that while talent, executives and publicists will privately bemoan the issue, fear of inadvertently triggering another backlash kept several studios from speaking for this story even on background. (As one rep put it, ‘It’s just a lose-lose.’)”
He said, “I think this is a good thing. Wow! ‘We’re trying to put this agenda that we want to have in like this show, the fans don’t like it,’ Now, the fans are the problem? No, you’re the problem for trying to force it into the show.”
“You either meet the audience expectations or you die,” he added.
Avienda played by Ayoola Smart, Perrin Aybara played by Marcus Rutherford in The Wheel of Time (2023), Prime Video
Next, he reacted to another unnamed studio executive who discussed hiring so-called superfans to screen projects. The executive informed Vary, “They’re very vocal. They will just tell us, ‘If you do that, fans are going to retaliate.’
Asmongold responded, “This is a good decision. You know what this shows? It shows that we’re winning. You don’t get to morally obligate an audience to buy your product. That’s not how the world works. Nobody has to do that.”
He then cites the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie, “The first Sonic movie trailer was so f***ing bad that everyone on the internet hated. And then you know what they did? They went back to the drawing board and they fixed it and they made it the way that people wanted. And now they’re making Sonic 3 with Keanu Reevesas Shadow.”
Sonic the Hedgehog in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2022), Paramount Pictures
Asmongold then concluded, “What these companies and these writers believe is that they have some sort of moral authority to write these stories and then have everybody like them. And if you don’t like them, you are seen as the problem.”
“It doesn’t matter whether you think that it should be this way or not,” he finished. “If the companies are making products and people don’t like them then they’re not going to sell. And that’s it. That’s the bottom line literally. Nothing else matters.”
(L-R): Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn), Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone), Mrs. Hart/Sharon Davis (Debra Jo Rupp), Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), Teen (Joe Locke) and Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata) in Marvel Television’s AGATHA ALL ALONG, exclusively on Disney +. Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. ©?
