LOS ANGELES—Superhero adult parody master Axel Braun is featured in a new interview on Die-Screaming.com in which the director heralds the geek community as "a very important audience" that "can literally make or break a movie."
Read the interview here.
Braun, whose most recent film is the newly released Star Wars XXX: A Porn Parody, was interviewed about the recent rise in popularity of adult film parodies of superheroes and comic book characters. His Spider-Man XXX: A Porn Parody, distributed by Vivid Entertainment, won numerous AVN awards, including Best Parody – Drama and Best Cinematography. Braun won the Director of the Year – Body of Work for the second year in a row.
"The geek community is heavily tied to science fiction, comic books, and superheroes," Braun said in the interview. "With the mainstream movie industry focusing on these types of projects in recent years, geeks suddenly became a very important target audience. They are incredibly dedicated fans, excellent critics, and their massive networking can literally make or break a movie.”
Braun said that with the internet biting into DVD sales, he decided to target a different demographic.
"Geeks were an ideal target, and being one of them myself it was fairly easy to know what they wanted: parodies of cult movies, TV shows, comic books, or superheroes, infused with obvious deep knowledge of the subject matter, tons of nerdy references, and obsessive attention to detail. And boobs. How could I lose by being so totally awesome?" he said.
Braun concedes that he's got a dream job: "I get to shoot movies with my comic book heroes, fulfill every geek's dirty fantasies, and pretend that I'm a real director. Can't beat that!"
He noted that he first brought the idea of porn parodies of superhero classics to Steven Hirsch, founder/co-chairman of Vivid. "He jumped at it. Before I was done with Batman (Batman XXX: A Porn Parody) we were already in pre-production with three different superhero projects. No wonder [Hirsch] won the AVN Visionary Award this year."
He added that Superman vs. Spider-Man XXX, which comes out in July from Vivid, is "quite possibly the best movie ever made." He also confirmed that he currently is working on porn parodies of X-Men and Wolverine with plans to make parodies of The Dark Knight Rises, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, James Bond, Fantastic Four, Thor, She-Hulk and Daredevil.
When asked if he saw the adult parody trend as a lasting one or just a fad that will run its course and burn out eventually, Braun's parting shot was "The geeks shall inherit the earth!"
