Fandom CEO Perkins Miller on the Importance of IP as Hollywood Slashes Costs
variety.comJennifer Maas TV Business Writer With major cost-saving initiatives in effect at Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix, Amazon, Paramount and more mega media companies and economic uncertainty on Wall Street, the content spend free-for-all is definitely over.
Today, the focus is turning to scalable franchises that work for in a multiplatform media world where Hollywood will get the biggest bang for more limited bucks.
According to Perkins Miller, CEO of media company Fandom, the financial focus for the next 18 months should be on mining IP and franchises for all their worth. “My view is that, you don’t want to stifle innovation, I think creativity is incredibly important and you want to see that breakout show that is interesting or that movie that was greenlit because the story was so remarkable that it breaks the mold,” Miller said on the latest episode of Variety‘s “Strictly Business” podcast. “And I wouldn’t suggest that anybody should stop those kinds of activities.
I think that are important, obviously, from a creative standpoint. But from an economic one, which is the question you’re asking, what is the most economically smart thing to do, I think the most economically smart thing to do is to focus on franchises and figure out your scaled production against them.” Miller added: “If you can do three movies on a single set of cast and a budget framework and a production strategy that’s tied to a major franchise, I suspect that’s going to get a lot more traction, a lot more efficiently than funding three independent creative projects with some uncertain resonance.” As the head of Fandom, which launched as Wikia in 2004 before rebranding in 2016, Miller is basing his insights on fans (with whom he interacts both
Read more on variety.com