Bo Burnham Parodies Marvel With "Inside Cinematic Universe" Announcement
Last night, comedian and filmmaker Bo Burnham surprised fans with The Inside Outtakes, more than an hour of unused footage from the production of his blockbuster special Inside, celebrating the one-year anniversary of the comedy special's release on Netflix. Toward the end of the special, he stepped back from parodying pandemic life and internet culture, and poked a little fun at the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After an "Inside Studios" logo montage evocative of the Marvel Studios logo that plays at the beginning of their movies, Burnham announced a plan for nine upcoming films that mark the "Inside Cinematic Universe."
In a short video segment, Burnham says that he plans to follow the stories of the "themes and characters" introduced in Inside. He shared a graphic featuring a number of logos, not unlike the slate images that big, interconnected franchises tend to share.
You can see the (presumably fake) slate below.
Some of these are pretty obvious -- Inside 2, for instance, and Inside Genesis: The Long Journey In, which would presumably be a prequel set in 2020. Inside 1968 would be a prequel centering on characters in 1968, and you have the equally basic Still InsIIIde, the third Inside movie.
Other spinoffs include Socko: An Inside Story, which would follow the sock puppet seen in the song "How the World Works" in the Inside special. Girl Socko is equally obvious, with the added benefit that the font looks like the one from the Burnham-directed film Eighth Grade. Bezos: Quantum Prophecy would center on a fictionalized version of Jeffrey Bezos, the Amazon founder whose name was turned into a song and reprise in the special.
Then you have Severe Clinical Depression: Inside the Multiverse, which if we're being honest we would love to see. Who doesn't want a Spider-Verse style take on Inside?
The last, ostensibly slated or 2030, is 40, with the clearest nod to a Marvel logo since the "4" looks like the A in Marvel's The Avengers. That one feels like the most plausible thing Burnham could actually make, since it would thematically tie nicely into Inside without feeling too much like a parody of itself. In the course of Inside, Burnham turned 30 years old. In the song "I'm Turning Thirty," he sings, "It's 2020 and I'm 30; I'll do another ten. 2030 I'll be 40 and kill myself then."
He clarifies immediately after that he is not actually suicidal, and that's part of the song's joke...but it's a nice bit of meta-commentary that 40 is the last movie in the slate.
You can see Bo Burnham: Inside on Netflix and The Inside Outtakes on Burnham's YouTube channel.
