The director of “Men in Black” makes a film through NFTs
Dinosaurs vs. Aliens is an epic battle that has been fossilized in Hollywood purgatory for a decade.
Based on the graphic novel from 2012 by Men in black director Barry Sonnenfeld and storyteller Grant Morrison, Dinosaurs vs. Aliens regales an alien invasion during prehistoric times and the subsequent war on earth. It had every opportunity for a theatrical release: an exuberant premise, a built-in audience from the graphic novel, and a well-known director and cinematographer in Sonnenfeld attached. It was definitely meant to be a movie, except that the project never came out of the development phase.
“But I have always loved the idea,” says Sonnenfeld.
Last year, Sharad Devarajan, co-founder of Liquid Comics (the publisher of Dinosaurs vs. Aliens) came to Sonnenfeld with an idea of resurrection Dinosaurs vs. Aliens as a movie – using NFTs.
Devarajan had met film and TV producer Dave Broome who led his new company Orange Comet, a creative studio that makes NFTs as entertainment. Instead of a static image or GIF, many of Orange Comet’s NFTs are movie-quality CGI clips, often associated with a larger story or idea.
Orange Comet made several NFT drops for AMCs The wanderers died, Stan Lee’s Indian superhero Chakra, NHL teams Seattle Kraken and New York Islanders, NFL Alumni Association and more. Orange Comet has also secured agreements with major Hollywood studios and streamers to produce NFTs around various properties.
But Broome’s bigger vision for Orange Comet is to create or acquire original intellectual property (IP) as NFTs, develop that IP with the community of NFT holders, and then turn the project into a movie or TV show. One of the company’s earliest test cases will be Dinosaurs vs. Aliens with its first NFT release scheduled for November.
“I love the idea of creating these different NFTs because it gives me a chance to recreate this as a new IP,” says Sonnenfeld. “Secondly, I just want to learn about the future. I’m so old and white.”
Project owners, including the Bored Ape Yacht Club and DeadHeads, are already using their NFTs for various entertainment areas. Where Broome sees a distinct trajectory for Orange Comet, the storytelling lifts out of the gate with NFTs that are basically like mini-trailers.
“It gives fans something that feels like a truly bespoke collectible that tells a bit of a story in that NFT instead of just looking at a monkey who is either bored, hungry, tired, angry, whatever it is,” he says. Broome. , co-founder and CEO of Orange Comet.
Orange Comet’s goal is to capture the overall entertainment market and bring these features into Web3 by focusing on story-driven NFTs. If done correctly, Orange Comet could become a viable force in Hollywood as a go-to studio for building IP in the NFT area – that is, if there is room left to build in.
“Shouldn’t the best creative win?”
Almost two years ago, Broome was called by his friend Will Meris, CEO of the asset management firm Caliber Companies, who told him that he was interested in starting an NFT company and that he wanted Broome to run it.
As a Hollywood veteran, especially creative The biggest loser and The Ultimate Beastmaster and produces Jennifer Lopez’s Netflix documentary BreakBroome was not immediately thrilled with the prospect of making a pivot.
“I hung up the phone and thought, ‘I’m not going to think about this,'” Broome said. “What the hell is an NFT that I’m going to give up a 25-year career?”
But when NFTs began to dominate pop culture, there was something scratching in Broome – mainly that he was not impressed by what he saw.
“To put it bluntly, it was crap,” Broome says. “It was almost like just giving up an asset. So I started to get excited about this, because is not this an entertainment game? Shouldn’t the best creative win? ”
Broome took Meris on his offer and launched Orange Comet in April last year with the mandate that everything the company works with should be history-focused.
Orange Comet uses the 3D design studio in Broome’s production company, 25/7 Productions, to create the NFTs, and it currently has around 55 projects underway in sports, film and TV, live events and even real estate. While Orange Comet will continue to take on client work and special celebrity-driven projects, Broome is keen to expand the studio’s list of original IPs as NFTs, with a clear pipeline to Hollywood. In Broome’s mind, NFTs are no different as a medium for IP than what podcasts or social media memes and characters have become.
“We’re not sitting here walking, let’s just come up with something cool,” Broome said. ‘We go, what’s the playoffs? Where do we want to go? And how do we reverse that story? ”
“It’s a completely different world”
Dinosaurs vs. Aliens will be Orange Comet’s first original project. Although details are still mom, you can get a sense of what Orange Comet aims to achieve with its strategy through its work with The wanderers died.
In connection with the show’s series finale trilogy arch, which began in August 2021 and ends later this year, Orange Comet sold 10,000 generative works of art in its first collection of TWD characters and original animations inspired by scenes from the show, ranging in price from $ 50 to $ 250 and earning around $ 15 million. Another fall in April had 5,000 variants of Daryl Dixon’s (Norman Reedus) iconic motorcycle. They sold out in seven minutes on OpenSea worth 1.3 million dollars. Orange Comet also created Walker Access Passes, one-of-a-kind NFTs that will give holders exclusive benefits, including first dibs on future drops, qualifying for a personal view of the final, and access to a TWD virtual universe.
So when it comes to Orange Comet’s original or acquired IP, all the NFT drops and subsequent metavers would build up to what would become something like The wanderers died—Or the film version of Dinosaurs vs. Aliens.
“I’m about creating the world,” says Sonnefeld. “I can be creatively very involved in both the story and the visual without a traditional studio saying, can we have more close-ups?”
Although it was a well-reviewed graphic novel, Dinosaurs vs. Aliens stopped in development as a film adaptation mainly due to budgets. It has long been the story in Hollywood that studios are only willing to pony up for big movie tent poles if there is a wide and rabid enough audience to support it.
“They want Fast furious. They want Impossible mission. It is difficult to get studios to cut the checks for a completely new franchise, says Broome. ‘I have to turn around [Dinosaurs vs. Aliens] into a massive following in the NFT world. I have to build a base of people and a big global brand around it for Hollywood to notice. “
To do so, the Sonnenfeld and Orange Comet team will work with NFT holders to expand the world of Dinosaurs vs. Aliens. One of the criticisms of the graphic novel was that it was too short at only 96 pages. It may have been frustrating for early readers begging for more content, but it leaves a long trail for them to take the story further.
“We are finally coming to a moment where I see a lot of convergence in how we think about the future of storytelling, the future between the creator and society,” says Sharad Devarajan, co-founder of Dinosaurs vs. Aliensits publisher Liquid Comics. “This is not a romantic comedy. This is a massive universe that Barry had created where there is so much we can unlock now. “
There are no fixed details about what IP rights NFT holders will have, for example they will be able to use their NFTs in some commercial way. But Devarajan is clearly cultivating “creative adaptation” with society. Orange Comet wants to effectively bridge NFT enthusiasts who are just looking around for the next big project and existing fans of entertainment facilities such as Dinosaurs vs. Aliens. In case of The wanderers died‘s NFT falls with Orange Comet, 75% of buyers had never seen an episode of the show and 25% have never bought an NFT before.
“This is about a value proposition for both NFT buyers and fans,” says Broome. “Give them content that really excites and engages them, and you’re running the races in a massive way. Give mediocre, ongoing work, like most projects in this area, and you’ll struggle.”
For Sonnefeld, development of mini-clips of Dinosaurs vs. Aliens is also an affordable outlet for experimentation to concretize the film version.
According to the director, the last shot is off Men in black where the camera zooms out to reveal that our entire galaxy is just a sphere that aliens are playing with costs $ 750,000. Dinosaurs vs. Aliens. The difference now, of course, is that such a shot will cost a fraction of the price given how far the 3D rendering has come since 1997.
“We can try things without being incredibly expensive and worried that you can not do it because it is too expensive,” he says. “It’s a whole different world.”
Another, if not dangerous, world, in fact.
“The best has not yet come”
It is difficult to talk about the prospects of any NFT project without acknowledging the current tail stop the place is in.
The recent crash in cryptocurrency has triggered a decline in NFT sales. OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace, has seen sales plummet by 75% since May. June was also on track to mark the first month since 2021 where NFT sales together generated less than $ 1 billion. A silver lining is that it has never been cheaper to get into the NFT game. However, one has to wonder whether this downturn, together with persistent inflation, can have a long-term cooling effect on the glow around NFTs.
Broome believes the current volatility in the market is “extremely healthy” for the long-term success of NFTs and Web3 because it “washes away the crap.”
“We are in the middle of an earthquake of 8.0,” he says. “The weak structures that were never built properly collapse. What remains are those that had a solid foundation.”
Broome notes that the decline has affected Orange Comet in how they price their NFTs at lower costs and reduce the amount of their drops. But he generally remains unaffected by the current market situation. “This is a marathon for us, definitely not a sprint,” says Broome. “For many people in this room, they have taken the money and run. But the truth is that the best is yet to come – just ask all those who saved in the early days of the dotcom era. This is history that repeats itself. You do not have to think about it. “
