Superhero films are make-believe, and The Franchise, the latest from executive producer Armando Iannucci (Veep, Avenue 5), contends that there’s just as much phoniness behind the scenes as there is in front of the camera.

A look at the production of an entry in a popular comic book-based big-screen series, Iannucci’s comedy—created by Jon Brown and premiering Oct. 6 on HBO—skewers Marvel and its ilk with a rapid-fire ruthlessness that is the mastermind’s trademark, as well as a considerable amount of inside-baseball satire that peels back the curtain on the insanity that defines such endeavors. Casting superhero movies not as cinema but as wildly expensive content, it’s a show that’ll be music to Martin Scorsese’s ears.

As befitting such a wink-wink affair, the Oscar-winning Goodfellas director’s distaste for the popular genre eventually factors into The Franchise, whose story concerns a would-be blockbuster titled Tecto: Eye of the Storm.

Its lead is the persistently insecure and ambitious Adam (Billy Magnussen), whose worries about his performance and professional prospects are intertwined with his panic about his Doritos-shaped body (big on top, small down below) and the fact that the myriad wacko steroids and supplements he’s taking may be turning him into a goat. His frame of mind isn’t helped by co-star Peter (Richard E. Grant), a theater-trained British thespian whose contempt for this job is equaled by his disdain for Adam, whom he needles incessantly, thereby amplifying the young star’s anxieties.

Adam and Peter are the........

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