noamineo wrote on Jun 20
th, 2021 at 1:40pm:
Its not the rightsholders being stupid its the rights holders wanted a lot of money. Its entirely possible the DnD IP is absolutely worth $150,000,000 to make a movie. The problem is that means the movie now costs $150,000,000 + the budget of the film(which if you spent $150 million on rights you're probably looking at another $500,000,000+ to justify those rights.
So now you've got a 700 million dollar movie in production. Obviously the executives are going to meddle the SHIT out of that. Imagine a bunch of old white guys who have no idea what D&D is making creative decions about the D&D movie. Ain't no way in hell that ends well.
Your confused about how licensing deals are written and how IP holders actually are involved.
If a licensor gets 150M guarantee from a deal, they don't give a shit whether the project shits the bed. That guarantee is called a guarantee for a reason. Most deals aren't front-loaded like that anyhow, because a license no one is willing to pay for isn't a license worth owning. Aka no way Hasbro is asking for a 150M for DnD (I could probably find out what they would ask, but that's here nor there). They would certainly get a mix of
I can tell you definitively that a product license from Disney goes for a 200k upfront guarantee right now. For film it would certainly be more, but pure fantasies about Hasbro's license costs are still fantasies. If Hasbro doesn't license IP, they don't have a growing business since a huge amount is based on just that.
After a deal is signed, the people in Hasbro, or any IP holder, who "approve" content decisions aren't the bean-counters, they are the creative types. They aren't motivated by money so much as cockamamie ideas about their IP and how it should be treated. This is hella amusing because rights holders whore out licenses left and right when they need cash to anybody with a checkbook (see Vegas licensing show), but somehow they are the ones who think they know the IP better than the people who are going to sell it. Somebody over at Legendary isn't critiquing a product because they they they know how to sell more, they are just being stupid when they ask to move the mouth a couple centimeters on way.
The people at the top of Hasbro don't make content decisions. They don't have time for that, nor would they ever.
It's IP simps in the middle that do that.