D&D 5E (2014) The RPG or the Brand?

[Parmandur]

Or got them from the library.

 

[Mark CMG]

LOL, point taken; however, they have no rights to the Silmarillion, and the Tolkien estate ain't selling.

Tolkien while alive and his estate said that about LotR and The Hobbit, then they made deals for the rights to each, more than once for each. However, I am not sure sure anyone would go after The Silmarillion to make films. I could see someone pursuing the Tolkien Estate for rights to the stories collected in 1966's The Tolkien Reader to make a mini series or some other television project. Once you get past The Hobbit and LotR, Tolkien's work doesn't hold the same promise of huge returns, The Silmarillion included.

 

[transtemporal]

And the Marvel Cinematic Universe juggernaut behind it! I seriously doubt Guardians (good as it is) would have done half as well without the Iron Man, Avengers, Cap, etc pedigree to trade on. Even with their stellar record, Marvel thought Guardians was a huge risk.

True, I guess GotG would never have been made without the other movies. It might've stood on its own merits though, because its great and not explicitly a "superhero" movie (and all the baggage that implies).

 

[transtemporal]

And, yeah, the licensing deal with Sweetpea is spectacularly bad. It was done back in the TSR days by people less aware of the value of the brand.

The reason they don't do a Drizzt or Forgotten Realms movie without the D&D name is simply one of brand recognition - Dungeond & Dragons is a spectacularly well-known and valuable brand name; Forgotten Realms (and even Drizzt) just don't have the same value.

Thats interesting and probably good tbh. Sweetpea haven't done anything worthwhile with it so at least they can't screw up Drizzt too!

I guess I can kinda see the logic: "We're spending 300mill on this big tentpole summer movie so we want some brand recognition".

So Marvel must have balls of steel, seriously.

 

[transtemporal]

I think you have the sequence of events turned around. Hasbro licensed Transformers to Dreamworks and Spielberg ran it. Dreamworks hired the writers and the director. Hasbro Studios was created a couple years later, financed in part from the success of the Transformers franchise. The new self-financing arm is called AllSpark productions. It was only after the first Transformers movie from Dreamworks that they went and reacquired the TV rights so they could produce new cartoons in house.

I think Hasbro has enough money in feature films now to self-finance and develop a D&D movie, but they have already agreed (at least in principle) to sell the license to Universal.

Ah true. Thanks for fleshing that out, pure laziness on my part.

Actually... the fact they have a Magic Gathering movie on their slate is a good sign. At least they have an appetite for fantasy.

 

[Evenglare]

I've entered this thread way to late but still wanted to throw in my 2 cents. Something recently happened that addressed this same question. There is some mobile game coming out that is supposedly the "pokemon" mmo we have all dreamed about. Besides the fact that it's on mobile there's one HUGE thing wrong with it. It's simply -not- pokemon. If it turns out the be the second coming it's not going to matter because, again, it's not pokemon. I would speculate a crappy official pokemon MMO would garner 100% more attention than this other MMO, (whos name I cant even be bothered to look up because I don't -care- that much). Brand name attachment is arguably the most important aspect of... well anything really. It can make or break a franchise because of the massive fanbase large brands have. Here's a few more examples of brands and their power.

Dungeons and Dragons- the most relevant RPG in our space. Now I'm not starting edition wars but even I acknowledge the fact that 4e did poorly because it simply didn't "feel" like D&D enough. I'd wager that the system released under any other name would have massive share of the market at this point. I obviously don't have any data to back that up, but man even to this day when I talk to friends they proclaim how much they hate 4e because it felt too "video gamey". Which is the most annoying response ever, and clearly showed they didn't follow up on the game after PHB3 and beyond came out. Point here is that I can easily imagine the D&D brand was 4e's greatest enemy.

Okami/Legend of Zelda- Okami is probably the best zelda game you never played, it was fantastic and won't even get a fraction of a percentage of the LOZ fanbase.

Final Fantasy- Same deal with the D&D 4e fiasco. Final fantasy XIII was hyped beyond belief because it was the next final fantasy. Turned out the game is almost universally hated. Many time I hear "It was a decent rpg but a terrible final fantasy". Another issue is Final Fantasy vs Dragon Warrior/Quest. Here in America DQ can't garner the attention that Final Fantasy has, despite it being a fantastic franchise.

Most MMO's fit here when compared to WOW.

So yeah, to me brand is probably the most important aspect of ANY game. I made a post in the "General RPG" second about The Strange. The Strage IMO needs to get infinitely more publicity because of the solid game that it is but I know it'll never happen because of the big brands out there. It'll never even TOUCH the D&D / Paizo market share. In fact there are a LOT of games like this that deserve more than what they are getting. Eh, this is way longer than I initially intentioned, I'll bow out now.

 

[Sailor Moon]

Brand is a double edged sword.

It can either lead you to victory, or it can lead to your demise. A brand can come with certain expectations that people will be looking for and if they aren't met, can lead to disastrous results.

 

[delericho]

So Marvel must have balls of steel, seriously.

Yes and no. It was a calculated risk - failure would mean they'd lost a lot of money on making the film, but they'd know not to do it again. But success has vastly broadened the scope of the Marvel universe - now they have an entire universe beyond Earth to explore and they know they don't need a cast of 'known' characters to sell a film.

Given the massive success of their previous movies (especially Avengers), they probably had the money available to take that risk and write it off if necessary. Not that they would want to lose all that money, of course, but it must be nice to have it to lose.

 

[transtemporal]

Yes and no. It was a calculated risk - failure would mean they'd lost a lot of money on making the film, but they'd know not to do it again.

Making your summer tentpole movie a completely unknown property by a director best known for Scooby Doo and Slither is one hell of a calculated risk. The only studio decision that was crazier this year was The Lego Movie!

 

[Hussar]

Considering their next offering is bloody Ant Man (now THAT'S scraping the bottom of the barrel), GotG doesn't look like as much of a risk.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the first Marvel movie tanks. It's going to happen, it has to. They can't all be box office smashes, no one does that, not even Disney. I remember Disney before they started hitting it big with the princesses. Good grief there were some horrible Disney movies for a number of years. Even a Disney horror movie (although I liked that one as I recall).

But, something tells me that so long as they stick to formula, even the poorest performing Marvel movies are still going to make a buck or two.