Price Point 018: How to Develop Film and TV Like it’s 2023
Every producer should be a direct to customer brand
Are you developing like it’s 1999? What can be done differently now?
Typically, a producer with a property or an idea does this —
Attach writer
Work up a pitch
Maybe package it a bit
Pitch it to a network
Close a deal
Network owns everything
This misses the opportunity to communicate with the audience to get feedback and make properties famous early. Ours is the era of direct connection — influencers are creating major retail brands; major VCs have huge podcasts; reality television stars are being elected president! It’s not about getting on the cover of Variety anymore — it’s about your own distribution.
Behind the scenes Hollywood is in general very low key on social media, but every producer, prodco and studio today has the opportunity to develop a public-facing brand and to launch projects, in some form, directly to customers. If we can bring ideas to the public at an early stage, we can (a) see if people like the idea, (b) build a fan base and there is also option (c) — create an online brand that you own and that doesn’t need film or TV at all. As you may be aware:
CocoMelon, a web native animation brand, was acquired for $3B.
Odds1out has 4B views on YouTube.
Mr. Beast is an extremely valuable brand — and not on TV.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection is worth $890MM. Its owner is worth ~$4B.
Ways to go direct —
TikTok/YouTube/Insta — Perfect for cartoons, but not just cartoons.
Podcast/audiobook. Bill Oakley did an audiobook of his 1969 space romp that was very fun. Similarly, Mike Sacks launched his new book Randy as a free podcast. Bret Easton Ellis previewed his new book The Shards in audiobook form on his Patreon before releasing the book.
Online Comics — Webtoon, the YouTube of comics, has over 80 million readers per month. All of Us Are Dead, a South Korean zombie drama, started here and wound up on Netflix. You can start a project on Webtoon and retain all rights.
NFT — The death of NFTs has been greatly exaggerated. The market cap of NFTs today is $10B. An NFT collection creates the opportunity to assemble your fans, or fellow travelers, or the biggest fans for an IP, and create a community. Moreover, NFTs do not just have to be jpeg’s.
Short stories — Wattpad which has 90 million monthly users just for short stories.
Toys — Did you know Uglydolls started as a toy?
Or combine these.
Old way/new way:
This works for the next Pokémon and probably The Purge. Does it work for the next Downton Abbey? I would think so, though in a different way. Pokémon might work better on TikTok or as an NFT, but Downton could have worked as a pod or as short stories. If you have an audiobook or graphic novel version, you’re likely to learn something important about whether people like the idea and what they like about it.
The best time to know that people don’t care about your idea is before you put $30MM into it.
Looking at it the other way, if these tests work out brilliantly, how does that affect your conversations and opportunities down the road? If instead of a script you have a script and a rocking online comic book with toys and an NFT collection, you’re in a much more exciting position.
Three things that could amp this up.
A Fund
Not everyone has the funds to suddenly launch an annual program of podcasts and online comics and trailers and NFTs, etc. It might be helpful to create a fund that is essentially a VC fund for content. The fund would fund creators and producers in development specifically to do this kind of outreach and to build online brands, and then would have a shared interest in the project. The Fund could also share best practices. Over ten years, one would hope that the fund will find major projects and franchises like the next Avatar, South Park, Mr. Beast, Guggimon, RTFKT, and Everything Everywhere.
AI
Always remember that the first time you see a technology it will be at its worst. AI is already impressive. In terms of ideation, coming up with testable content and eventually production, Ai is going to make things much easier, faster and cheaper.
The Content DAO
DAOs have emerged as quick start coordination vehicles allowing distributed groups of people with a shared purpose or interest to coordinate and get things done.
A normal production company or studio is limited by the experience and perception of the small number of people who work there, usually all together in one city. A DAO could quickly attract a diverse range of people from all over the world with varying tastes and insight. With proper recruitment, a successful content DAO can have eyes and ears beyond the imagining of any normal production company. So one can imagine a DAO getting very good at finding interesting things and talent.
When the production company decides to pursue a project brought in by the DAO, whoever brought it in could be compensated and/or brought on to the project according to rules that can be created between the DAO and the company.
The DAO is not part of the company. It could choose to deal with multiple companies or producers. The DAO is an aggregation of culture mavens and creators.
The DAO could help create many of the items — trailers, posters, NFTs, online comics, etc. — that are required for getting feedback, as discussed above, as well as giving feedback when the company wants to test something more privately.
In time, the DAO could develop internal capabilities such as business affairs, legal, production, etc. to create efficiencies for smaller prodcos, as well as expanding to new geographies.
Community has never been so important and it has never been so easy to form a community.
Develop in public and in stages and leverage the connectivity and community of our time to reduce risk and increase opportunities.
