The Top Franchises and From Whence They Came!
I previously shared who owns the Top 50 global entertainment franchises, and now let’s look at where they began … their origins, the original incarnation, the original medium of each property.
We are have four main categories color coded as follows:
Entertainment (Cream) - Film, series, short (moving pictures)
Published Work (Green) - Books, Comic Books, Manga
Products / Toys (Pink)
Video Game (Blue) - Arcade, PC, console, online, mobile
Historically, properties originating in a Printed Word have proven themselves to be the most profitable category for franchises with 20 of the top 50 franchises totaling $458.7 billion. However, if you break this down by intellectual property, Toys & Products are the most profitable category by IP with 3 properties representing $147.3 billion in revenue, an average of $49.1 billion each, where Books average $22.87 billion per intellectual property. However, we must recognize that Sanrio’s Hello Kitty (#2) represents $88 billion of the Toys & Products number. And, the latter number will only increase in the coming years as New Line and FlynnPicturesCo. continue to develop Hello Kitty’s big screen debut!
Let’s take a quick look at how these category numbers stack up against their industries. Globally, in 2021, the entertainment industry (home, mobile and theatrical) revenue totaled $99.7 billion, a 24% increase from the previous year. Disney is at the top of the global box office, followed by Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures and Lionsgate, respectively. The demand by studios, streamers, and platforms for content is at an all time high, and valuable IPs with their built-in audiences are becoming vital to long-term growth versus higher risk original stories and properties. However, it is the balance of the established and the new IPs that will be the future. Let us enjoy inventive takes on classics like The Batman, an expansion of an existing IP’s story like The Mandalorian, as well as fresh new IPs to ensure we invest in the global franchises of the future.
Lightyear ©Disney, Minions @Universal Pictures, Top Gun @Paramount Picture, Avatar @20th Century Studios + ©Disney
2023 is shaping up to be an amazing cinematic year for mega franchises and their owners. Equally exciting are numerous high profile franchises that return to the big screen this year; Paramount Pictures / Skydance / Jerry Bruckheimer Films’ Top Gun: Maverick, 20th Century Studios / Lightstorm Entertainment’s Avatar The Way of Water, the first in a trilogy of films for the IP, Universal Studios’ Minions The Rise of Gru and Pixar / Disney’s Lightyear, a Toy Story spinoff and the origin story of character Buzz Lightyear.
The gaming industry with almost 3 billion gamers worldwide was a $178.5 billion dollar business in 2022 (VentureBeat | Newzoo) … and we are just beginning our metaverse journey. The top earning companies in this category are Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Tencent and Activision Blizzard, respectively. A bold move by Microsoft was big news in January 2022 when they announced their $68.7 billion dollar deal to buy Activision Blizzard, consolidating 2 of the top 5 players! As gaming titles are transformed into high quality entertainment like Pokémon Detective Pikachu, Sonic the Hedgehog 1 & 2, Uncharted and Arcane … and with so many more in development, and the launch of Unreal Engine 5, the convergence of gaming and entertainment is truly upon us. Just ask Netflix!
Arcane ©Riot Games, Uncharted ©Sony, Sonic the Hedgehog ©Sega, Pokémon Detective Pikachu ©The Pokémon Company
The global toy industry was a $141.08 billion dollar business in 2021 according to FortuneBusinessInsights. The top players are Lego, Bandai Namco, Hasbro and Mattel, respectively. These companies are transforming from single category manufacturers into entertainment companies that are digging deep into their IP toy chests to aggressively develop entertainment and beyond in order to ensure the long-term relevancy of their IPs. It is a pendulum swing for toy manufacturers who now have greater control over their success by investing in their own IPs versus being exclusively beholden to studio IPs. Hasbro announced it has more than 30 film and series projects in development, including a trilogy of films for their Transformers IP, starting with Transformers: Rise of the Beasts summer 2023, the much anticipated Magic: The Gathering series by eOne for Netflix and lots more My Little Pony too. Mattel Films / Warner Bros./ Heyday Films big Barbie film splash at CinemaCon looked amazing, and we can’t wait to see how Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, and the entire team developing the film bring live-action Barbie to life for the big screen! And beyond Barbie, Mattel has a Masters of the Universe film with Netflix and a dozen more projects in development for valuable IPs such as Hot Wheels and Barney. Lego’s film rights have moved from Warner Bros. to Universal with Ridgeback’s Dan Lin and Jonathan Eirich along with Lego’s Jill Wilfert at the helm of development so hopefully we will see a new Lego movie soon!
Barbie ©Mattel, Hello Kitty ©Sanrio, My Little Pony ©Hasbro, Transformers ©Hasbro
Lego’s recent announcement that it is partnering with Epic games to build a safe metaverse for kids brings a toy and gaming company together. It is a genius move. Lego is a beloved brand and this is a big step to ensuring they can grow and evolve with their customer base while also continuing to expand their own IP ecosystem. Epic Games learns from young games who will become future customers. A win win!
And, last, but definitely not least, the global publishing industry will see approximately $112 billion in revenue in 2022 and maintain a nominal growth rate of 2.8% (IBIS World). Publishing is a beloved, mature industry that evolves steadily and slowly. Yet the popularity of female teen led #BookTok is adding some much needed excitement around books. “Word of mouth has always had a big effect on what books people read, and BookTok can turbocharge that process” ~NPR. Publishers do not traditionally retain rights to the works they publish, so none of the big 5 publishers (Penguin Random House, Hachette Livre, HarperCollins, Simon and Schuster, and Macmillan Publishers ) own the IP published works that are mega global franchises. With numerous publishers adding media executives to their ranks, and comic book companies securing output deals with studios, it will be interesting to see how this evolves. Having said that book to screen adaptions are still in high gear with some much anticipated releases coming to the big and small screen this year.
Harry Potter ©Warner Bros. Discovery, Game of Thrones ©Warner Bros. Discovery, The Lord of the Rings @Tolkien Enterprises, Batman ©Warner Bros. Discovery
What is the bottom line? IPs based on the Printed Word (Books, Manga, Comics etc.) represent the largest franchise revenue and the greatest volume of properties being transformed into global franchises. So keep reading, and finding those immersive gems that can be evolved into other mediums and flourish as franchises. We will dive deeper into why books with imaginative worlds, endearing characters and multipath storylines are such a wonderful source material for global franchises in an upcoming issue of The Franchise Report.
