{"id":36254,"date":"2026-08-10T10:05:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T05:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=36254"},"modified":"2026-08-10T10:05:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T05:05:24","slug":"john-oliver-takes-shots-at-own-companys-dc-superhero-movies-on-last-week-tonight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=36254","title":{"rendered":"John Oliver Takes Shots at Own Company&#8217;s DC Superhero Movies on &#8216;Last Week Tonight&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tOn Sunday\u2019s edition of <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2026\/tv\/news\/john-oliver-expose-trump-shady-crypto-dealings-world-liberty-financial-last-week-tonight-1236821605\/\">\u201cLast Week Tonight,\u201d<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/t\/john-oliver\/\" id=\"auto-tag_john-oliver\" data-tag=\"john-oliver\">John Oliver<\/a> aimed his ire at President Trump\u2019s Department of Justice that has, under former Attorney General Pam Bondi, designate Attorney General Todd Blanche (Trump\u2019s personal lawyer who\u2019d defended him for concealing hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels) and attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro, seemingly transformed into a unit that carries out legal retribution at the behest of Trump.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\t\u201cMany of the cases and investigations I\u2019ve mentioned so far have since fallen apart,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2026\/tv\/news\/john-oliver-general-hospital-acting-laura-wright-1236801010\/\">offered Oliver<\/a>, before throwing to an eye-opening clip of NBC News\u2019 Laura Jarrett grilling Blanche about the department\u2019s failings to his face during a sit-down interview.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\t\u201cThe record has been tough,\u201d Jarrett tells Blanche. \u201cFor both [James] Comey and [Letitia] James, the indictments get dismissed; the indictment against Congressman Adam Schiff that he called for never gets off the ground; the probe into those six Democratic lawmakers, the grand jury declines to indict; a judge in D.C. tosses out a subpoena for Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. That\u2019s bad news for the department, no?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\t\u201cIt means that we\u2019re working hard,\u201d Blanche responded, adding, \u201cI\u2019m dancing around the conversation a little bit, but we\u2019re not going to run away from hard cases \u2014even if the media doesn\u2019t like it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tCue Oliver: \u201cOK, first: No one\u2019s accusing you of \u2018running away\u2019; they\u2019re accusing you of losing. Rest assured, everyone believes you ran cock-first as hard as you could straight into a brick wall. And second, I didn\u2019t realize the existence of repeated unsuccessful attempts was actually good news \u2014 that\u2019s huge for DC movies, if true.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tThe comedian then pointed to a collage of DC <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/t\/superhero-movie\/\" id=\"auto-tag_superhero-movie\" data-tag=\"superhero-movie\">superhero movie<\/a> posters that included \u201cBirds of Prey,\u201d \u201cThe Flash,\u201d \u201cAquaman and the Lost Kingdom,\u201d \u201cShazam! Fury of the Gods,\u201d \u201cBlack Adam\u201d and <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2026\/film\/columns\/supergirl-stinks-hollywood-failing-female-superheroes-1236798145\/\">\u201cSupergirl,\u201d<\/a> the latter grossing only $126 million worldwide against a $170+ million budget and another $120 million in marketing expenses, standing to <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2026\/film\/box-office\/supergirl-box-office-bomb-dc-studios-1236797855\/\">lose up to $100 million for the studio<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tThat studio, of course, is <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/t\/warner-bros-2\/\" id=\"auto-tag_warner-bros-2\" data-tag=\"warner-bros-2\">Warner Bros<\/a>., which not only belongs to the same parent company as Oliver\u2019s HBO show, but may be taken over by the pro-Trump Ellison family if Paramount Skydance\u2019s acquisition goes through.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Sunday\u2019s edition of \u201cLast Week Tonight,\u201d John Oliver aimed his ire at President Trump\u2019s Department of Justice that has, under former Attorney General Pam Bondi, designate Attorney General Todd Blanche (Trump\u2019s personal lawyer who\u2019d defended him for concealing hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels) and attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/variety.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/JohnOliverTease.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pics-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}