Hollywood’s next hit could be based on an NFT—and you’d never know

In 1994, True Lies was a huge hit, grossing nearly $400 million at the box office. It makes sense: It starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood history, and was helmed by director-freshman James Cameron Terminator 2.

But how many watched La Totale, the French film it was based on?

That’s the question on John Wick creator Derek Kolstad’s mind. In between writing Netflix’s upcoming Splinter Cell show, Kolstad is writing an eight-episode anime show based on Forgotten Runes Wizard’s Cult.

If you’ve never heard of Forgotten Runes, it’s probably because you don’t spend your nights surfing the NFT marketplace OpenSea. It is an NFT collection that was launched last July and consists of just under 10,000 fantasy characters. The question is simple: Is it possible for a show based on NFTs to cross over to a mainstream audience that may not even know what those three letters stand for?

“That’s real life and that’s what Web3 does, and there’s a distinction between the two,” Kolstad said in a recent Zoom interview. “You [need] to bridge the divide by just making a good thing, a good thing that makes people say, ‘What is this? Is it based on something? What is it?'”

NFT Collections, which Bored Ape Yacht Club, usually features thousands of different characters, as well as a loose story that ties them together. But NFTs are polarizing. They have been enthusiastically adopted by some, but are despised by many. Those working in the industry are aware that interest is too limited to market NFT adaptations, like a TV show, based on the crypto credentials alone.

But that doesn’t mean NFT characters, stories, and franchises can’t be fodder for an adaptation that goes mainstream. Forgotten Runes is one of many NFT brands hoping to make the jump from the blockchain to the big screen.

“The number of [NFT owners] in a single collection is usually around 5,000,” said Bryce Anderson, head of production at Clubhouse Pictures, which helped produce I, Tonya and Birds of Prey. “If that’s your audience, it’s not enough to create a global brand. We talk about our TV shows and it’s 500,000 people a week or you get cancelled. That’s what you need.”

It won’t be easy. Much of the hype surrounding NFTs was generated by speculative bubble that enveloped the crypto market in 2021. The crash in crypto prices in recent months has numbed the speculative mania, dampening enthusiasm for NFTs. Despite the cold winds of “crypto winter”, many creators are trying to prove that NFTs are here to stay.

Similar to how some developers and engineers left the Silicon Valley giants to join the crypto industry, renowned creatives are exploring NFTs. Most notable are the celebrities. Seth Green is working on a show to play his Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT. Reese Witherspoon’s production house works with a film and TV universe for the World of Women NFT collection. Equally important are the artists and screenwriters, who have come from companies such as Pixar and Marvel.

“You never know what something is going to be,” said Bearsnake, one of Forgotten Runes’ founders. Bearsnake declined to give his real name, but confirmed to CNET that he ran creative at an entertainment startup acquired by Disney. “Hello Kitty started as a vinyl coin purse. Did they know it would become… one of the biggest media franchises in the world? No, but it organically found its way to where it is now.”

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Fund a show, own a character

For some, the goal is for a universe created from an NFT collection to break through the cryptographic ceiling and go mainstream. Others see NFTs more practically: as a way to help finance productions.

“The biggest barrier for any young filmmaker has been finance,” Spike Lee said during a talk at the NFT.NYC conference in June. “Where are you going to get the money?”

Lee says technology has helped decentralize filmmaking, as amateurs can now shoot and edit video on their phones and laptops. However, funding continues to confound upcoming artists. Lee hopes NFTs can change that. He is piloting a program at New York University, where he teaches filmmaking, that allows his students to finance projects by issuing NFTs.

“Films are still going to be made by the studios, and I think NFTs will fit into the independent cinema,” Lee said.

At the center of the premise is intellectual property. Punters can invest in up-and-coming filmmakers and the characters they create, just as they can invest in start-up companies. The more popular these characters become, in theory, the greater the returns.

IP bleeds into the other proposed benefit of media creation via the blockchain. Buying an NFT often means buying the IP of the depicted character – and the right to build on top of that IP by creating a backstory. Many hope this can change the way films and TV are written and made.

Take the Forgotten Runes. Wizard’s Cult is a collection of 9,995, each featuring a different fantasy character: magicians, warriors, alchemists, clairvoyants, and more. Those who own an NFT gain access to the Book of Lore, where they can write an official backstory for their character. Once written, it cannot be changed – even if the NFT is sold to another person.

It sounds like a recipe for chaos — the Internet is undefeated when it comes to loading unsuspecting platforms with offensive content — but the idea is that self-interest will prevail. Worthy characters can be chosen to appear in Forgotten Runes’ upcoming anime. If there is a hit, the characters within, and their attached NFT, become more valuable.

Writing fanfiction is technically illegal, Bearsnake points out, as it violates copyright law. The suggestion, made by many NFT gatherings, is that franchises can be built faster by embracing the passion of fans rather than simply tolerating it.

“Some of my favorite literature of the last 10 years, like actual literature, is stuff that people have written on the Internet and released on the Internet for free,” Clubhouse Pictures’ Anderson said. “That was their creative impulse, and I think [NFTs help find] a way to let it live in a more public way.”

Anderson is the co-creator of Runner, an upcoming NFT compilation. Runner takes place on a planet called Omega and focuses on The Omega Race, a competition to decide who rules the entire planet. It is written by Blaise Hemingway who, through the Disney Animation Story Trust, helped write Frozen and Big Hero 6.

For Hemingway, the idea that NFT holders can create official backstories for their characters reminded him of being a kid and creating storylines for his Star Wars characters.

“There might be a character that appears on screen for two seconds in a cantina scene, but what is the story of that character?” he said. “We follow the story of about 12 central characters, but there’s a whole world that has parallel stories going on that intersect with this.”

Hemingway and Anderson have plans to adapt Runner to other media, though none are concrete yet. A film or TV expression seems inevitable given the team’s credentials: Working with Hemingway and Anderson are Bran Unkeless, producer of The Hunger Games, and Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, director of Snow White and the Huntsman.

NFTs go pop

The business models of NFT collections — those that have business models in the first place — often depend on the ability to break into mainstream culture. But breaking out requires quality products, and quality products take a lot of time and effort to make.

Forgotten Runes are among the more ambitious NFT groups. Beyond the anime show, there’s a comic book series that had its first issue in June, plans for a board game and, oddly enough, even a cookbook. A Forgotten Rune’s massively multiplayer online role-playing game, or MMORPG, is in development and is set to launch early next year.

The idea of ​​creating a franchise and expanding it into different mediums is as old as Disney, Bearsnake said. What’s new with NFTs is a set of tools that allow fans to play a more decisive role in that process. However, these tools create both problems and solutions. Creators must create products with mainstream appeal, but also appease NFT investors who are mostly speculators, more interested in short-term hype than long-term vision.

“The majority of people in the room are really in it for financial gain, and that’s OK,” Bearsnake said. “I think there’s a lot of unrealistic expectations from a lot of the community for the founders, because not everyone understands what goes into making a comic. Like, it was hard.“

It’s a difficult time to branch out. The past few months have been tough for crypto. Ether, the currency behind most NFTs, is down over 50% since the year began. That’s the thinking not only of NFT values ​​– Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs are at about a third of their all-time high — but also of mainstream interest in mysterious technology.

The circumstances for a blockchain blockbuster are not the most favorable, but NFT creators do not need to create the next True Lies. They just need to make the next La Totale.