Monday Morning Quarterback Part I

By BOP Staff

August 8, 2011

If you were only gonna go all in on one thing, it should have been Cameron Diaz.

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Reagen Sulewski: But look at that "horrible" name recognition, which got it to $50 million. Does a random James Franco movie get a fifth of that? These prebaked franchises are definitely the safer bets, but you do have to wonder how far you can go with it before they're eating the seed corn.

Max Braden: I think it's like gambling in Vegas. You may win a few hands on the unknowns, but name recognition is where the house wins in the long term, which is why Hollywood sticks to that formula.

David Mumpower: When we had the Despicable Me conversation last spring, there was some debate about the value of all of the marketing tie-ins with the Minions. The point I tried to make then was that this is how the process works. A major corporation is willing to expend a finite but significant amount of capital in order to build brand awareness for a property. In the case of Despicable Me, the short term benefit was to create a solid box office performance for an unknown license. The longer term benefits are myriad. Minions can be sold as toys, they can be licensed with other products, and other Universal projects may be linked to the Minions, creating an automatic association with a previous, positively received property. This money was not spent for opening weekend box office or even global final take. That is just a step on the journey.




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What we have seen with The Smurfs mirrors this. The value of the intellectual property this week is exponentially larger than was the case just a year ago today. We saw the same thing with Alvin and the Chipmunks and its Shamequel. With Planet of the Apes, Fox has redeemed a historical name brand, thereby setting the table for sequels and new merchandising opportunities. Keep all of that in mind and think about the entire debate from the perspective of a studio (i.e. a corporation).

If Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson makes a movie and his popularity increases, how does this help the corporation? That one is a trick question in that every time Johnson is marketed as The Rock, the WWE benefits since they own the rights to the nickname. But you get the point. If you run Sony and Dwayne Johnson makes a Sony movie that tears up the box office yet offers little hope of a sequel, how is your company secured in the long run? They have the short term revenue source but that's it. The situation even hurts them some in that the next time they want to employ Johnson, he will demand more money since he deems himself more bankable.

If, however, the movie Johnson makes for Sony has franchise opportunity, the corporation will have the ability to mine said property for centuries to come in as many avenues as present themselves during the time frame. Why then would they be better served to cast a bankable lead in a project without franchise appeal in order to attain a better opening weekend? The answer is that they rarely would, which is why sequels represent the preferred feature production these days. Even as consumers repeatedly state a desire for new and original ideas, name recognition continues to be the driving force in consumer movie-going behavior.


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