ATLANTA, GA – APRIL 26: A general view of Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Infinity War Screening at The … [+]
The entertainment landscape has been progressively moving towards capitalizing on Web3 through popular franchises. The start of this shift however has not been without its challenges.
The legal perspective around ownership is seeing ongoing litigation between Quentin Tarantino and Miramax, Nike
NFT issuers and holders, therefore, need to understand the complexities involved in what is, and isn’t, allowed once an NFT changes hands. For example, once purchased the underlying rights of an NFT aren’t generally given by the issuer. Instead, specific rights are given to display and exhibit the work.
Under federal law, a full copyright holder is granted certain rights under ownership. Including the ability to reproduce and distribute the work, as well as introduce derivative projects. Generally, NFT holders can’t do this and subsequently fully commercialize their NFTs, which therefore brings the question of ownership to the forefront.
With the sector in its infancy, in regards to its understanding and application of Web3, clearly, several issues still need to be ironed out.
What is clear however is the mass potential of increased revenue. Marvel, for example, has been selling physical merchandise for decades and is seen as a tangible revenue stream for the company. Web3 has now made it possible for the company to sell items such as digital figures, key scenes and even potential original movie scripts, all tracked by the blockchain to guarantee originality. Unlike memorabilia of a physical nature, however, Marvel could make royalties from each subsequent sale of their product, once again, because of blockchain.
Fox
According to Axios, Scott Greenberg, the CEO of Fox’s Blockchain Creative Labs division, “sees NFTs and other digital assets as an opportunity to create more fan engagement not just across all of Fox’s properties, like Fox Sports, Fox Entertainment and Fox News, but third-party franchises too.”
The opportunities for virtual world creation become limitless with a substantial and potentially complete shift on the horizon from physical products to digital assets. As a result of the fact that tangible space is not needed in the digital sphere, monetization opportunities become rife.
Physical to digital
One of the changes we saw companies make over the past decade was the development of social media marketing campaigns around their products and services. Hollywood was no different in adopting that shift.
Some media companies have gone so far as to invest heavily in intent-data and data remodelling solutions to enhance their customer experience and improve efficiency and conversion rates online.
It is becoming apparent that there is a gold rush for companies to invest in this new age of data and implement emerging technologies. They will be critical drivers for advertising, customer & client journeys, inventory & product management, new technologies, & the overall analysis of where markets are headed whilst moving toward Web3.
Hunter Bessell is the founder of Colony, a growing NFT company that is home to the Colonists, a sold-out collection of 25,000 customizable avatars that are playable in the company’s upcoming blockchain game Colony Online.
Colonists were the number one most transferred NFT on the Ethereum blockchain the week it was released (likely due to the large collection size of 25,000 NFTs), and the project continues to grow. The collectible characters are currently boasting over 780 ETH traded on the secondary market, which equates to over $2 million at the current price of ETH at $3,200. The collection has already seen single pieces resell for upwards of $8,000 at the time of purchase, and has over 5,600 unique holders across the entire project.
SAN DIEGO, CA – Hunter Bessell in one of his offices.
The innovative element of the project is that it is arguably strong enough to have taken the path of being an online game without the insertion of NFTs and cryptocurrency. However, Bessell envisioned the potential future of the market and proceeded to develop this way instead.
“Using the Ethereum blockchain as an underpinning technology for our in-game economy means people will earn provably-rare digital assets (NFTs) and eventually sell them to other people who want them for the in-game utility or the social status associated with owning them.” He said.
He continued: ”These collectibles will always be owned by the people who have them in their crypto wallets, meaning the game servers won’t always need to exist for the items to continue being bought and sold on blockchain-based digital marketplaces. That’s the real power of using NFTs, it’s the true ownership of your digital items.”
”There are going to be trust-fund kids in the future whose grandparents earned rare NFTs that will eventually sell for millions even after the game shuts down…
“This is the future of collectibles, and we are already seeing multi-million dollar sales happen with popular collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks which don’t even have in-game utility yet.”
Colony Online aims to be a streetwear-focused “spiritual successor” to Disney’s Toontown Online. The game will reportedly incorporate mechanics which leverage NFTs and blockchain technology in unique ways. One of these features includes an NFT-based rarity metric called your drip score. Your Colonist’s drip score will be a calculation of the rarity of your equipped in-game items and gives you play-to-earn rewards that change depending on where you sit on the drip leaderboard.
The team believes features like their drip score will help gamify the repetition of collecting more cosmetic items and will drive an interesting meta when it comes to how NFTs are valued in the in-game economy. The designers behind the game also plan on creating strong incentives to continue holding their in-game cryptocurrency.
The opportunities for Hollywood in emerging or established fanbases are also perhaps more sizable than is currently being imagined, as concepts like Colonists portray an ecosystem that can be utilized to not only capitalize on present fanbases but also merge new fans into a pre-existing economy.
