How Disney Loses Control of Star Wars & Marvel Franchises
I’ve been provoking a debate with my friends by saying “In the future, Disney loses control of its most popular IP”
1 Billion Streamers Cometh
In a future of 1 Billion Streamers, which is my shorthand for an unfathomable number of individual content creators empowered by AI tools, these creators will have the means to produce their own Hollywood-level of entertainment for their communities. Which means…
Fans communities will be able to take over the narrative of their favorite IP — such as Marvel or Star Wars
Or Harry Potter for that matter.
The immediate counter-argument I tend to hear is — “Disney will shut that down through their extensive legal resources.”
To me, this counter-argument fails to understand the sheer volume of the 1 Billion Streamers concept.
My name is AI: for we are many
There won’t be a single entity to prosecute or defend against. I’m talking about everything from a small fan group of 50 people who want to see and share between themselves, Harry Potter with all the characters portrayed as furry rabbits?
Or an organization like Anonymous, but one that publishes media and decides that its supporters hold the true canonical narrative path of the Star Wars universe.
Music is already crossing this rubicon
The assertion that we’ll have generative AI films and series is looking ahead to quite a few breakthroughs in generative motion imagery, voice, sound and music. A lot of media elements must come together to create a complete production, but we can see progress around each one of those elements being made on a daily basis.
Music, in some ways, is the most advanced in this regard. We’ve seen examples of artists like Eminem, The Weekend and Drake having their vocal and music styles emulated by AI.
The music industry has mostly responded in typical fashion by trying to shut this activity down. We’ve seen Spotify recently start banning examples of AI generated music. We’ve been here before, in the days when mp3 filesharing was becoming prevalent, and ultimately, the industry found that the only way out of that mess was to steer into it. By embracing what the audience demanded — easy access to a near infinite library of music — the industry adapted and found equilibrium. Services like Apple Music and Spotify (ironically) would give audiences the channels to be able to consume music legally.
Be more Grimes
So how does Disney and the rest of the entertainment industry adapt and survive (and preserve their IP?)
Embrace the change — early and often!
Rather than trying to protect her work, the musician Grimes decided to enable artists who are looking to use her voice in their work. She’s created a platform to license her ‘vocal print’ and then to promote artists who have created original work with it. She’s even decided to re-record a song, created by the community, using her actual voice.
If I were suddenly put in charge of Disney — most of what I did would be disastrous — but with regards to this issue, I would set up a licensing/subscription model for participants to be able to legally remix IP as fan-created, AI generated content. Following that, create a platform to host and promote that content — so that they can still maintain the primary channel for both official and unofficial versions of the IP. Within that platform, they’d be able to maintain some level of editorial control to prevent the extreme misuse of the IP (e.g. hate speech) and then, on the positive side, the would be able to shepherd the best of the content into the ‘official’ channel, and discover new creators to welcome to their production family. I could imagine many more small animation studios creating many Spiderverse-style animated shorts and films given this type of initiative.
Embrace the firehose
If studios can learn to embrace the flood of content that is coming — it will actually allow them to scale their production output to the point that there would be nearly a 24-hour stream of content for any of their most popular IP, if fans wanted to consume that much across a variety of quality levels of fan-produced media.
But if you look at some of the short-form videos in circulation — I’d say there’s definitely demand…
Also, IP owners will be able to reach niche audiences like never before.
Anyone want to see the Infinity War Saga reimagined with all the Avengers as kittens? We got you!
It will change the role of the studio, production company or writer from the protector of their IP — into being an originator of that IP, who plays the lead role in guiding the community to create great narratives. Ultimately, revenue drivers will make this a fait accompli because it will be much more profitable to serve every niche interest and every cultural nuance imaginable with fresh stories.
