Hollywood loves a navel-gazing satire about the movie business. Audiences do too, when given a good reason, from the upbeat mockery of 1952’s “Singin’ in the Rain,” to the excoriation of a studio executive in 1992’s “The Player,

Himesh Patel leads the comedy produced by Armando Iannucci and Sam Mendes, set behind the scenes of a big-budget comic book adaptation.

Superhero films are make-believe, and The Franchise, the latest from executive producer Armando Iannucci (Veep, Avenue 5), contends that there’s just as much phoniness behind the scenes as there is in front of the camera.