HOLLYWOOD EMBRACES NFT

You’ve probably heard by now about the excitement surrounding NFTs – profit hungry Hollywood certainly has.

Independent filmmaking is one of the early adopters of the technology trend, which first came to global attention in the art world.

It was the sale of a piece of digital art (see below) for $69.3 million early in 2021 that made the movie world think that if a JPEG could fetch such a price, what possibilities could there be in movies.

Among the first off the blocks was filmmaker Trevor Hawkins who sold non-fungible tokens – or NFTs – at $1,000 each to represent ownership shares that give profit participation in his independent film Lotawana.

Meanwhile film finance firm The Forest Road Company have closed a $20 million fund that will make pre-production investments in films in return for the right to sell collectibles associated with their movies using NFTs.

An NFT is a unique digital certificate of authenticity for digital or physical objects and the tokens are stored and transactions recorded on a blockchain, the same kind of network which powers cryptocurrencies.

It’s all very new but the appeal to Hollywood is that is gives filmmakers the opportunity for more capital on the front end and greater profits on the back end so creators can better monetize their projects.

Is the technology here to stay?

We shall see…

– Sandro Monetti

Film piracy has surged to unprecedented levels since coronavirus lockdown measures were introduced and now the industry wants greater protections.

Data shows that illegal streaming and downloading of films has risen by more than 40 percent since March 2020.

When a movie is released in theaters it’s hard for thieves to obtain a top-quality recording of it and they often have to resort to filming it with a hidden camcorder. But when theaters closed for the pandemic, studios sold off many of their big budget movies to streaming services and pirates found it much easier to replicate digital releases perfectly.

That has led to a huge number of unlicensed downloads of films like Mulan and Trolls World Tour which caused such movies to fall short of their digital buys targets.

With government efforts to prevent viewers from accessing pirated content proving largely unsuccessful, the movie industry is seeing profits disappear and urging lawmakers to get tough with the thieves.

Congress is examining closing loopholes in copyright laws and updating criminal penalties more appropriate to the modern digital world.

For an industry losing fortunes to the pirates, new policies and regulations can’t come soon enough.