Analysis: Why Hollywood Has Embraced Franchise Films

Let’s take as the latest example of a franchise film,

The Fate of the Furious

from Universal Pictures. It is No. 8 in a franchise that continues to grow. This franchise started in 2001, and has delivered $5 billion for Universal at the box office alone, not to mention the tens of millions of dollars in ancillary revenue generated by the franchise. It’s a case study for Hollywood of how to constantly reinvigorate a film franchise and turn it into a long-term, profitable brand.

Everywhere

Interestingly and ironically, with the notable exception of Disney Consumer Products, the L&M business in Hollywood is being controlled by a handful of elite alumni from the Andy Mooney era at Disney Consumer Products.

These past few years, the movie licensing business and its attendant franchises, has seen significant change in management, but one thing seems to remain constant–almost every major studio has brought in alumni from Disney Consumer products to run their L&M businesses. For fun (and pun) let’s call them The Mooneys.

Last month,

License Global

released our exclusive ranking of the

Top 150 Global Licensors

based on retail sales of licensed merchandise.

Mooney-era executives are now leading the CP efforts of some of the top companies on that list, including:

All of these executives came up under the leadership of Andy Mooney, who ran Disney Consumer Products during what was a golden decade of licensing.

During his time at Disney, Mooney oversaw the company's worldwide licensing, publishing and retail businesses and the tripling of retail sales to $36 billion. He also pioneered the $4 billion Disney Princesses franchise and established the Disney Fairies brand, and retail lines based on the Pixar Animation films

Toy Story

and

Cars

.

The next generation of Disney CP executives all cut their teeth at Marvel. In the four years since Mooney left Disney CP, Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media, under its new Marvel-dominated team, has increased retail sales from $36 billion a year to $56.6 billion.

The simple lesson here is that all of the major Hollywood studios are bound and determined to emulate Disney’s huge L&M success through franchise development. This only bodes well for retail, licensees and all of us related to the business.

But what’s next? Our job here is to help you, our readers, get ahead of the trends in the licensing sector and the larger consumer marketplace. Next month, we will analyze the SVOD (streaming video-on-demand) market, including the different players, such as Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and Twitch, and their licensing strategies.