Robert Kirkman Says Writing One-Off Renfield Was a Relief Amid ‘Done to Death’ Cinematic Universes

Robert Kirkman was very relieved to write Nicolas Cage’s Renfield as a standalone movie instead of the origin of a new cinematic universe akin to Marvel or DC.

Speaking to GameSpot, Kirkman made clear the film won’t have a post-credit scene or include deliberate dangling plot threads intended to spawn spin-off films and TV shows.

“[The cinematic universe has] kind of [been] done to death now, where [at] the end of the movie, they kind of give you a preview of the movie you wish you would have been watching the whole time,” he said. Kirkman added that he does love the Marvel Cinematic Universe and other big film franchises, but “it was cool to be able to do a movie that was self-contained”.

He compared Renfield, somewhat ironically now, to Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope. This premiered simply as Star Wars back in 1977, and while it did offer an endless universe with seemingly infinite directions to explore, it also told its own story from start to finish.

“The hope here is that it ends up being like, you know, Star Wars: A New Hope,” Kirkman said. “That was a self-contained movie that had a beginning, middle, and an end. When that movie ended, you felt like you had gotten a complete package. But there was a world that was introduced that had a bunch of different cool stuff in it. And, you know, you could go literally anywhere with it.

“There’s a bunch of threads and characters and cool aspects to [Renfield] that we could definitely continue the story with,” he continued, but it’s “not necessarily needed and we certainly didn’t detract from the movie in any way to set that up.”

Star Wars has perhaps diverted from that path now, joining the likes of Marvel in producing several spin-off films and TV shows to accompany the growing lists of also canonical books, comics, and so on. Episode 6: Return of the Jedi has ties to The Book of Boba Fett, which has ties to The Mandalorian, which has ties to Ahsoka, which has ties to Rebels, which has ties to The Clone Wars, and so on.

DC has three cinematic universes on the go, including the current DCEU with films like Shazam and Batman v Superman, the new DCU which will (seemingly) kick off in The Flash and lead into Superman: Legacy and more, and the Matt Reeves Batverse led by Robert Pattinson, which is getting its first spin-off show in The Penguin.

Game of Thrones just got its second spin-off show announced too (though more are on the way), and while Harry Potter already has eight main films and three prequels in the Fantastic Beast movies, Warner Bros. Discovery just announced a spin-off show for it too.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.