Daredevil season 4 has been officially announced by Marvel Studios.
Actually, it hasn't. But you're likely going to see that breaking news - or similar movie and TV coverage - around the internet for April Fool's Day, and were surely expecting Screen Rant to be getting in on the act, as we have been for the past decade. Instead, I'm breaking site style a little bit to write a piece about why we're not celebrating the prankster's holiday - and won't be going forward. This article isn't just to explain why, but also to explore how our industry has changed in the time since such gags were rampant.
The ethos behind our April Fool's Day posts was always rooted in satire; in highlighting some of the perennial issues in both our industry of media journalism and of the industry we cover. It's not about tricking readers into thinking something exciting is happening when it isn't (indeed, we'd never have ran the Daredevil season 4 piece as it was just too obvious). It was about finding that sweet spot of a movie development so ridiculous it feels unreal, yet you sense against all odds it's what Hollywood would actually do. We wanted the reader to be stunned, and somewhat relieved in the discovery.
There was more to it than just that, however. April Fool's Day was an opportunity to wryly play with how geek news is disseminated and reported. Every joke post on the site had a source link that took you to a "gotcha" image (originally Mephisto), rewarding the inquisitive, doubting reader for their diligence - and highlighting those reposting who haven't double-checked.
What fun we had! When done right, our April Fool's Day stories would spread and prove our point in the most delicious ways. That Zack Snyder directing a Yoda spinoff (weeks after Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice's continuous release).
The highlight has to be 2013's piece reporting on a Full House revival, which was picked up by just about every site under the sun and some taking months to realize they'd been had. Except, by the end, the joke was on us. A little over a year after the post, Netflix greenlit a reboot, Fuller House, which ran for 5 seasons and inspired the return of Roseanne, Will & Grace and increasingly countless others. That's not, to be very clear, Screen Rant taking credit for creating Fuller House or the spate of sitcom reboots, but it nevertheless highlights the fine line this form of parody operates in.
That clairvoyance was a running thread, and part of why we're bringing the April Fool's Day posts to a close. Just last year, three of our stories ended up landing a little too close to reality: a Luke Skywalker's Jedi Academy. Following our axioms, it was becoming an increasing challenge to create stories that didn't feel like they'd happen in the next 12 months - or that eventually did despite our better efforts. In the age of streaming big bucks making every development hell pipe-dream a reality (at least for a couple of seasons) and shared universes busting out the multiverse, there's very little that exists off the table. Kirk is coming to the non-Kirk Star Trek spinoff. Hayden Christensen is back as Darth Vader. Harry Styles is in the MCU. A Disney+ Daredevil series isn't a joke or a far-out prediction, it's something that has been rumored in some corners, and after Charlie Cox's Matt Murdock in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin in Hawkeye feels more like a case of "when" than "if."
This makes it harder to come up with good April Fool's Day posts, but it also highlights how the conceptual grounding of the parody has eclipsed the Day. Hollywood has taken the joke and ran with it. When Chris Pratt is Mario, the fun is over.
But that's only half the story. We've talked about the industry we cover, but what about film journalism itself?
Fake news has been on the rise in all corners, and that's regrettably no truer than in geek journalism. When anything can happen, anybody can additionally claim it will happen to much adulation. There's a subculture of scoopers trying to get the latest, often spoiler-laden details on an release to share to their large fanbases, and even more bad actors who are creating entirely false reports based on guesswork, hedging bets to appear further connected. It begins with reports that haven't been rigorously checked, relying on a single source (or verification via multiple people who've heard the same thing from the same source) for information that ends up not coming to . But now, once respectable sites exist to create daily, show-stopping "exclusives" from sources who are closer to trend data than they are to Hollywood, and entire reporter's careers are built on having the inside track on Marvel and DC, which creates pressures when there simply isn't a new scoop to hand.
What's real and what isn't? Everybody - editors, writers, readers - are having an increasingly hard time sifting the truth, and it's turned engaging with the blockbuster hype machine into a challenge worthy of the World's Greatest Detective. James Gunn regularly shoots down egregious rumors on his Twitter, there's public debates between reporters over the veracity of their spoilers, and the line between leak, rumor and report is so blurred that everything and nothing is real. Because a Daredevil season 4 seems like an inevitability, it's easy to appear to have the inside track by claiming basic information on it, cashing in on the informed guess when Kevin Feige announces it at D23.
Without even factoring in the context of everything else going in the world, this is an environment that doesn't need more confusion. The articles that Screen Rant would create on April Fool's Day are de rigor on other sites for the other 364 days of the year. The reasoning skills we wanted to promote through the cheeky source links is a requirement in navigating the current movie space. When Chris Pratt is, according to reliable sources, every video character, the fun really is over.
And so we have this piece, taking a head-on look at what we've been tongue-in-cheek playing with all along, rather than getting in on the fun itself. It's a decision I'm sure some of our readers will find disappointing, and others will say is about time. Certainly, this happening on the same day that Ben Kendrick, our long-tenured Publisher who pioneered the April Fool's Day posts in the first place, is leaving the site for industries new makes it feel very much like the end of an era. But it all serves as a reminder of what Screen Rant is at its core: a place for engaged and informed discussion. And that's true regardless of what day - or year - the calendar says.
