Just when I thought Disney couldn’t get any bigger after acquiring Marvel and launching The Avengers as a transmedia franchise, the entertainment giant proves me all wrong. Today, Disney announced that it will purchase Lucasfilm for approximately $4 billion, complete with its rights to the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises and Lucasfilm’s special effects arms. While this message
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[NB: While I'm talking specifically about the (US) TV industry in this post, the principle of direct global distribution to reach the global audience is applicable for pretty much any medium that can be digitized.] In this blog, I have again and again referred to a variety of trends that currently impact entertainment consumption around
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DAY 2 – Morning Talk: It all started with a Mouse – Orrin Shively (Disney) in conversation with Alison Norrington Mickey’s 10 commandments (by Marty Sklar): Know your audience. Wear your guests’ shoes. Organize the flow of people and ideas. Create a weenie. Communicate with visual literacy.
In case you couldn’t make this year’s StoryWorld Conference in San Francisco, I’ll be offering a few short re-caps of key talks and themes throughout the next three days. Here we go. DAY 1 – Morning Key Themes: The story remains crucial to transmedia. A transmedia project should not originate from the desire to make
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Needless to say, today’s workshops at DIYDays LA were filled to the brim with great speakers and innovative perspectives. For those that couldn’t attend today’s workshops, here’s a re-cap of the most important bits: Common Points There were a few common themes mentioned in almost every talk I attended, and they were all based on
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As the concept of transmedia storytelling becomes increasingly mainstream it is important that we do not lose ourselves in continuous debates on what transmedia storytelling is and what it is not. It is relatively easy to theorize and predict with no end; what is considerably harder, however, is to turn all this transmedia theory into
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Today saw two very important and very similar announcements by two key players in the entertainment industry: YouTube announced the launch of Merch Store, a tool that allows artists sell their merchandise, concert tickets, and more, whilst Amazon declared that it will also start publishing – both digitally and physically – starting with 122 books
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Last week I had a very interesting conversation with Kathy Franklin, President Franchise Development at Lightstorm Entertainment. Kathy has a long-standing background in franchising after having worked at Disney for almost eleven years and now heading the franchising efforts for James Cameron’s Avatar. During our chat, Kathy pointed out a very important challenge for traditional
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Yesterday afternoon I attended the ‘Storytelling Through Advanced Mobile Content’ panel at the CTIA Enterprise & Applications Conference in San Diego. The panel featured four case studies from Transmedia LA members and a ‘fire-side chat’ between Seth Shapiro, Principal at New Amsterdam Media and Partner at Media Valuation Partners, and Albert Cheng, Executive Vice President
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With the advent of each new medium came an inherent scare for the producers of the ‘old media’: Would this new medium kick them out of business? So far, all ‘old media’ were able to survive in the long run, if only after making some adaptions and after accepting a certain decline in their audience.
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