Hollywood’s Baobab Studios has won nine Emmy awards for its short film Movies and virtual reality (VR) experiences. Now they are branching out into the world Web3 with a family-friendly project called “Momoguro” and an associated Ethereum NFT collection.
Created by multimedia director and animator Martin Allais and writer-director Nico Cassavecchia, Momoguro is a colorful fantasy world where creatures called “Momos” can fuse together to form hybrid characters. Momoguro lets go NFTs as well as an NFT role-playing game (RPG) where players can go on “quests” across a world called the Uno Plane to combine Momos.
The franchise is producing its generic NFTs for 0.22 ETH apiece (about $365) on Thursday, which are “Holoselves” players can adopt to later enjoy Uno Plane, according to the project’s coin the website.
Momoguro RPG will be on ImmutableX, a layer-2 Ethereum scaling solution, and will include NFTs as a core game feature. The game will be launched in Q2 of 2023.
Baobab Studios is not a Web3 company, but it is exploring the possibilities of how NFTs can engage users in storytelling experiences.
“We believe stories transcend media,” Baobab Studios CEO and co-founder Maureen Fan said in a statement.
“Baobab Studios’ mission is to inspire you to dream and bring out the sense of wonder. Make YOU matter. This starts with creating great characters and stories, like Momoguro, where you can be a part of the story,” Fan added. “We want to bring the Momoguro IP to as many channels, streaming platforms and mainstream media as possible.”
Momoguro’s creators also believe their property has an important message.
“The community plays a big role in this,” Momoguro’s Cassavecchia said in a statement. “Inclusion is essential to the franchise, from ethnicity, gender and body types, Momoguro’s ethos is that everyone is welcome.”
Baobab currently boasts Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull and Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin on its board, and has raised over $31 million in total funding from the likes of Disney, Samsung and Comcast, according to Crunchbase data.
Baobab is not the first Hollywood studio to release NFTs or Web3 content. Last fall, Warner Bros. releasedLord of the Rings” NFTs that provided buyers with a digital copy of the first film. Lionsgate, Netflix and Paramount have also experimented with NFTs for some of their biggest properties.
That said, it seems Baobab is more interested in creating a sense of community than just collecting revenue – it already hosts Twitter Spaces for Momoguro fans, and has gained a significant Twitter followsand has nearly 50,000 members on its Discord server.
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