Prime Video has just released ‘Immortal Combat’, ‘The Odyssey’ and ‘Master of the Universe’. Do these tacky rip-offs make any sense in 2026?

During the first years of social media, The Asylum, the production company that churned out ultra-low-budget knockoffs left and right, became something to laugh at, sure, but also something to analyze: Who were works like Alien Abduction, The Da Vinci Treasure, Snakes on a Train, Pirates of Treasure Island or Transmorphers aimed at? Although none of them were good and the special effects were laughably cheap, they flooded video stores and scored several hits thanks to the “so bad it’s good” appeal. In fact, it’s not that crazy (even now) to turn on the TV in the middle of the night and come across “masterpieces” like Sunday School Musical or Almighty Thor. However, lately something has changed.

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Not even knockoffs get any respect

Lately, The Asylum has put fifth-rate actors and crappy special effects aside to dive headfirst into, of course, generative AI. And what was funny because of the shoddiness has stopped being funny altogether. The first one they released was animated, A New Toy Story (you’ll never guess which film they’re ripping off), but after that they opened the door to things like The Odyssey (same title as Nolan’s, terrible execution), Resident Zombie or Insidious Possession. And, with DVD and Blu-ray gone, they go straight to padding out the bottom of streaming services‘ catalogs (Prime Video, mainly). It is what it is.

The Asylum made 15 films in 2025, and it’ll make another 15 this year, they’re so cheap that with just the money streaming services will pay them for the rights they’ll already be able to finance another 15 loads of nonsense for 2027 (the first has already been announced, it’s called The Snow Queen and, indeed, it’ll be a rip-off of Frozen). Is there an audience for films like Immortal Combat or Master of the Universe? Sure: distracted people or just people who want to leave a funny review on Letterboxd or make a video laughing at it, but certainly not enough that, in a normal world, The Asylum could stay open. Cheap as their dreck may be.

The good news is that Generative AI shows what it can and can’t do: if this was all, Pixar can rest easy, because I can already tell you that A New Toy Story is absolutely horrendous in every sense (even though Tom Arnold, for some reason, has decided to lend his voice to this absurdity). It’s also true that from time to time, The Asylum lets its hair down and tries to make original productions that aren’t based on something else. This year it’s Shark Frenzy and Summerween’s turn, last year it was Shark Terror, Evil Nun and Disaster Strike Force… The same inhumanly bad quality as the usual mockbusters, but without the fun of knowing what it’s plagiarizing!

Back in the day, B-movies were a way for directors to toughen up and make the jump to the big leagues. However, it doesn’t seem like any director from this production company is going to become the new Spielberg. The days of Sharknado (their biggest success) are already behind us and all that’s left now is apathy and desperate entries into the top 10 of streaming services with nothing else to offer that week. Is there an audience for these things? I suppose so, or else they’d already have crashed and burned. In the end, the key to surviving in Hollywood wasn’t having good ideas, but skirting plagiarism just enough that they can’t throw you in jail.