Cinema, Hollywood e franchise I am now a trinomial inseparable. Cinema that entertains and collects money is still produced in Hollywood as it was a century ago and today Hollywood looks for franchises as Lancelot sought the Holy Gral. Of the 150 film produced by Hollywood studios in 2014, Well 30 are sequel say something. Until now they have been the comics to provide the fuel to the film industry franchise. In 11 years the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a media franchise of films based on comic book characters from Marvel Comics, has produced 21 film that have built-in in total 12,6 billion of dollars. James Bond has been around for 22 years, has 25 films to his credit, but has built-in overall 2 billion and a half of less of superheroes Marvel. THE 16 film starring Batman, the cartoon character of the DC Comics, have produced, in 27 years, 5,8 billioni of dollars. Close behind are the 7 films by Spiderman, always a hero created by Marvel Comics, with 5,5 billion of dollars. In short, in the top ten positions of the movie franchises that have done better at the box office there are 4 films with heroes of the comics, 5 movies taken from novels e Star Wars which, alone, has crumbled all the box-office records of all time. Those who are fascinated by movie franchise statistics can go up This Page and satisfy one's own classification curiosity.
Videogames = franchises
What else I share of the medium may be able to create franchises like comics? THE Games! It is a'industry totally young digital, with player completely new, with models of business unreleased and with a public which makes marketers salivate, 56% of users are under the 35 years. An estimated 155 million Americans (51%) play video games on a regular basis. In Italy, habitual gamers are estimated at ten million. The industry of videogames it has everything that other media sectors lack for face up to il epochal change in the ways of best before date and distribution of content. Overall it is now as big as the film industry: PwC predicts that in 2019 the whole video game industry it will be worth 93 billion dollars, a little less thanfilm industry estimated $10 billion more.
But the most interesting thing is not these numbers, but the capacity of the Games to know realize a shape revolutionary narrative able change radically the way they are told stories and the way they happen relations among the people involved in the activity. To say, something that in public perception is at the antipodes of videogames, that is theeducation, it really can be reformed around some concepts and some practices that are special of the videogames. For example, Microsoft has glimpsed into Minecraft, a Swedish video game purchased by the Redmond giant in 2014, the possibility to develop a training project, Called MinecraftEdu, to be used for learning. To date, 100 million fans play the video game that encourages la creativeness, collaboration between people and stimulates the problem solving. Isn't that what school is supposed to teach?
I Games incorporate organically the two foundational concepts of a new medium: theinteractive , social relationshipand administered through the software. No other media is able to achieve the powerful fusion between content, software and relational experience as videogame narratives are able to do. That's why thevideo game industry, also in its methods of distribution and marketing, it is the model of the future to which all subjects of the cultural and entertainment industry (authors, creatives, developers, production houses and distribution platforms) must strive to package content intended for new generation consumers.
Il business of video games is a business very hard, perhaps more difficult than catering which, according to the “Economist”, is the most demanding economic activity that exists. However, the video game sector offers aunique opportunity especially for the start-up. The opportunity to to build a video game that in a very short time can become a real one franchise, especially in the mobile gaming sector, the one with the highest growth rate and the most promising. In a few weeks the video game can pick up millions of players and a part of these, those who bring the economic resources (le white whales), can actually develop a form of addiction to the content. As we well know the potential of a franchise they are huge. It can be one gold mine with inexhaustible threads.
Therefore: videogames = cinema
There is a problem, However. The problem is there difficulties, it would be better to say the impossibility, on the part of software houses or publishers to replicate a success with different characters and stories from the product already established as a franchise. No he did it Zynga after FarmVille, he failed Rovio with Angry Birds which is the most downloaded application on mobile devices. So it happens that in one first stage, that ofaffirmation of the franchise, growth of the business happens in three digits then level up if a new product does not intervene to replicate the success of the previous one. And this phenomenon not yes it is still visa on a correct scale. It happens that the software houses, to maintain employment and profitability levels and to meet shareholder expectations, they have to diversify so as to bring to fruition the potential of the franchise, which, however, can result hardly expendable at the outside of the public of video games. Hence the merchandising of video game characters and, now, with renewed vigor the attempt to find one outlet on great and on small screen producing film o TV shows based on the adventures of these characters.
I attempts facts so far have been good, but not so encouraging. maybe theonly franchise of video games to leave a segno he was at the cinema resident evil: the 7 films of the Japanese survival horror Capcom, starring the beautiful Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez, have built-in A little bit more than 1 billion of dollars. The two films of Lara Croft, with a no less magnificent actress like Angelina Jolie, have exceeded a total of 600 million dollars. The first 15 video game movies blockbuster champions have made about 2,5 billion dollars, averaging $160 million per film. It's not a great result and there's also the aggravating circumstance that the criticizes ha torn apart these adaptations, nipping each possibility di enlarge il public beyond the aficionados. For cinema audiences, movies with video game heroes are still gods B-movies.
Compared to the early 2000s when the saga of resident evil need Lara Croft, quality of video games and stories told in video games it is grown a lot and therefore these distant attempts to bring video games to the cinema constitute a precedent with limited validity. What happens is that the publishers of video games return to watch al movies as powerful as possible extension their video franchise. He's doing it Rovio with The Angry Birds Movie due out in 2016, but it's doing it big above all Activision Blizzard, based in Santa Monica, California, which, together with Electronic Art, is the fourth largest group of the world in the production of video games preceded only by the Chinese of Tencent, Sony and Microsoft.
THEarticle di Tim Bradshaw, the tech reporter of the “Financial Times” (reproduced below in the Italian translation by Ilaria Amurri) It describes such as Santa Monica group is preparing to travel a few kilometers to take Hollywood by storm with their own franchises. Here is now born Activision Blizzard Studios. Good luck!
Activision establishes its own film studio
Activision Blizzard has just hired il Hollywood producer di The hateful eight, by Quentin Tarantino, per realize film e TV series drawn from video games such as Skylanders e Call of Duty. Robert Kotick, CEO of Blizzard Studios, decided to launch this new studio at the end of 2014, soon after announcing theacquisition from 5,9 billion di dollars of the manufacturing company Candy Crush, King Digital. For Kotick it is important to diversify the company, renewing the effort in the field of video games and eSports competitive and exploiting the big ones franchise by Activision for to propose new formats di Entertainment.
His latest recruit, Stacey Sher, has more than twenty years of experience in Hollywood and has worked with directors the likes of Oliver Stone, Steven Soderbergh e Terry Gilliam. Among his best references are Erin Brockovich, Django Unchained and Gattaca – the gate to the universeas well as the TV series of Comedy Central entitled Reno 911!. Today the producer is co-president of Activision Blizzard Studios and will work alongside Nick van Dyk, a former Walt Disney executive who helped acquire Pixar, the famous animation company, Marvel and Lucasfilm.
Activision's new initiative follows a long one year di film franchises taken from video games, with titles all due out in 2016 such as Angry Birds, Assassin's Creed e Warcraft, by Blizzard Entertainment itself. Kotick's hope is that Activision can to count on tens of millions of loyal players that recur year after year for franchises like Call of Duty.
Video games and cinema, a wedding to do
Yet even the most beloved video games find variable findings when it comes to transferring them to the big screen. Over Years' 90 Super Mario Bros e Street Fighter II, which had been hugely successful, made a flop al box office, while others, as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and the series of resident evil, they collected a success economically significant despite le critical severe.
Having produced films such as Pulp Fiction (1994), Sher gives some creative credibility to the Activision Studios project. “Her ability to collaborate with the brightest and most talented people in entertainment and her constant pursuit of creativity make her a perfect fit for Activision Blizzard Studios,” says Kotick. For her part, Sher is convinced that “the dedication to quality” of Activision may allow the company to shake off thenegative legacy of certain film which they have been in the past whether dai Games. In fact, the manufacturer declares:
The films I made, regardless of genre and target audience, wanted to be completely particular. I ran a tiny production company for years and realize that often when you're little you can do more things.
Tarantino also speaks enthusiastically about her: “she was a fantastic collaborator for the three films we made together”.
According to experts, Activision's choice reflects the increasing importance of the Games in the vast entertainment industry, in which sales of the latter have far exceeded the film takings of recent years. explains Piers Harding-Rolls, director of the games division at the consultancy IHS.
Today, the production of video games and franchises is an excellent opportunity in the entertainment sector, which greatly reduces the risks associated with this type of diversification strategy. Billion-dollar franchises like Activision demonstrate that the company is better placed than a large portion of the competition and that its transition can be successful.
The need to diversify to add new audiencesMichael Pachter, of Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles, describes Stacey Sher as "hugely talented", but he wonders se Activision arrange di stories strong enough to support a real film: “Movies are only interesting if they have a compelling storyline and it seems clear to me that Blizzard has a lot of them available, even if it can be difficult in certain cases, such as with Call of Duty. It might rather work to TV series di Skylanders”. The first novelty of the year will in fact be a TV show di animation taken from the franchise of Skylanders, with a series of plastic figures that reproduce the characters of the game.
Van Dyk is convinced that Activision Blizzard's films can do even better than those of the big Hollywood studios, thanks to successful franchises and a easily identifiable target.
We started from scratch and tried to understand how audiences experience entertainment. Ours will be a much more compact, light and efficient organization, we will not limit ourselves to entering the television and film system, but it will be something completely different.
The eSport
The new co-president was hired after the company took over last week Major League Gaming, that organizes tournaments with titles like Call of Duty. that ofeSports became a multi-million dollar business in recent years, with dozens of millions of players is they assist a competitions online on sites like Twitch, acquired by Amazon, and live, in sports arenas around the world. Activision reportedly paid $46 million for MLG, which helped pave the way for it in the market.
Last November, at a meeting of its investors, Activision he said he wanted to achieve new players and consolidate its commitment to its current target, focusing heavily on eSports, films and TV series.
