Since my antennae are always up for Booster Gold news, I'm being bombarded these days by nonstop rumors about which actor will play our hero in the announced James Gunn television show. The latest gossip (reported seemingly everywhere) is that someone has reported that they were personally told by someone else at a convention who it will be. Sorry, Internet clickbaiters, but I'm going to hold out for something a little more concrete before I declare the news Boosterrific-worthy. When DC/HBO are ready to announce the casting, they'll tell us.

Obviously, I'm not excited about this "news," but the dirty truth is that I really don't care who gets cast as Booster Gold on TV. That's because I know that they aren't making a television show for me. Heck, I doubt they're making it for any existing Booster Gold fans.

Why do I say that? Math.

Booster Gold Volume 2, which you would expect all then-existing Booster Gold comic book fans to have bought, sold approximately 53,000 copies of its first issue when first released during the month of August 2007. That's not too bad. Fifty-thousand continues to be a very respectable audience for a comic book even seventeen years later.

Compare that to the final episode of Peacemaker from February 2022. On release, HBO announced it set a single-day viewership record, and Forbes reported that over 584,000 households watched it opening weekend alone. You don't need to be a mathematician to see that 584k > 53k. By a factor of 10!

(If you want to turn those audiences into dollars: At $3.50 cover price, BG v2 #1earned a gross retail income of $185,500 in a whole month. An HBO Max subscription cost $15/month in 2022, so Peacemaker took in some portion of $8,775,000 worth of eyeballs in a single weekend!)

As the data indicates, if I was making television shows, I wouldn't be bothered by the opinions of a small minority 10% (or less) of my potential audience. You know I'm a die-hard comic book Booster booster, and if I could afford to get someone with the name recognition and box office clout of, say, Samuel L. Jackson in the role, you better believe I'd do it. He might not look or sound like Dan Jurgens' creation, but people would certainly pay to see what he delivers. And that's the whole point.

Not that I'm speculating, of course. I wouldn't do that.

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