A New Era of Branded Blockbusters Is Upon Us
From Super Mario Bros to Barbie, many tentpole movies now double as vehicles for brand storytelling and myth-making. What does that mean for marketers and filmmakers?
Last week, The Super Mario Bros. Movie blew past expectations and brought in a record-breaking $377 million in global box office sales and $204.6 million in domestic sales in its debut weekend between Wednesday and Sunday, per tracking data from Comscore. The success of the movie marks a significant milestone for video game adaptations, and signifies an interesting strategic pivot for Nintendo, a company that has been famously protective of its IP and historically refrained from cross-medium adaptation.
Moreover, the Super Mario movie was not the only blockbuster that charted last week. In second place, the Ben Affleck-helmed Air, a dramatization of the origin story behind Nike’s iconic Air Jordan sneakers, amassed $14.4 million in its domestic debut over the three-day weekend and $24.9 million worldwide, per Comscore data, which is a more-than-decent box office haul for a movie about securing a sponsorship deal.
Then there is also Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, which opened on March 31, and scored an impressive $38.5 million domestic gross and $71.5 million globally on its opening weekend, topping the box office chart. As the title suggests, the movie is based on the popular fantasy tabletop role-playing game, which has spun its own franchise-level web of content that ranges from YouTube series to podcasts. Now, the box office success and critical acclaim of the movie are sure to bring Dungeons & Dragons to a wider audience and potentially convert more fans. And it’s no surprise that a movie based on another popular tabletop game, Monopoly, is now in development.
It should be no suprise that there’s now a Monopoly movie in development.
Looming large on the horizon is the upcoming Barbie, directed by Academy Awards nominee Greta Gerwig and starring a bona-fide A-List duo, Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. Based on the iconic Mattel dolls, the movie is clearly being positioned by Warner Bros. Pictures as a summer tentpole with high expectations. The studio released a series of meme-friendly character posters for the film two weeks ago, which has predictably gone viral and drummed up further enthusiasm for its July release.
What’s New Exactly?
Of course, blockbusters have always been a great PR machine for real-life brands. Cast Away prominently featured the Federal Express logo (the protagonist played by Tom Hanks is a FedEx employee), and James Bond famously drives Aston Martin sports cars and wears Omega watches. Often, the intriguing origin story behind building a well-known consumer brand naturally makes for a high-stake business drama, a la The Founder or The Social Network. High-fashion brands are also no strangers to this genre of brand myth-making. This year, the aforementioned Air, the upcoming BlackBerry about the forgotten mobile phone pioneer brand, and the upcoming Flamin’ Hot, which tells the origin story of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, all fall into this tried-and-true category.
What is new about this new crop of branded blockbusters, however, is that they are no longer focusing on the behind-the-scenes drama of brands, or simply featuring brand logos or products as product placement. Instead, they are all about building an entertaining fictional story around a consumer brand’s widely recognizable products and mascots.
This recent shift from adapting real-life business origin stories to creating family-friendly backstories of branded assets is both jarring and within reason. In Hollywood’s never-ending quest for intellectual property (IP) that can be turned into profitable franchises, movie studios are bound to turn to popular consumer brands themselves, rather than the juicy human drama behind them, as a new source for bankable IP. In other words, consumer brands are the new IP. It is brand storytelling as marquee attractions, a perfect union of mass entertainment and fandom-driven consumerism.
Consumer brands are the new IP.
Of course, upon a closer look, this trend of “movies as brand myth-making” (beyond the archetypal variety of business origin-story biopics) has been bubbling under for a while now. One can draw a direct connection from the inception of the upcoming Barbie movie, which was stuck in development hell since 2014, to the box office success of The Lego Movie from the same year. Last year, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris showcased dozens of Dior couture gowns that are integral to the story, while Top Gun: Maverick “saved cinema” and further cemented the franchise’s legacy that doubles as the greatest recruitment ad for the US Navy. What’s new in recent months is the sheer quantity of chart-topping branded movies, and a prevailing sense that we are entering a new era of “brand-as-IP” movies.
Why Now, And So What?
In the context of broader movie culture, Hollywood’s new obsession with fictionalizing consumer brands comes at a time when the decade-long reign of superhero movies and comic book IP has started to wane: both Marvel releases this year so far have underperformed, and DC’s Shazam sequel is quietly becoming one of the biggest box office bombs in the history of superhero movies. In blockbuster filmmaking, the ever-rising budget is forcing everyone to focus on the bottom line and seek to maximize marketing hooks by building projects around familiar characters and stories. If consumers are going to show up for their favorite brands, why not work with those household-name brands in a mutually beneficial partnership?
The built-in fanbase is an undeniable draw for studios looking to mitigate risk, and the distinct genre shift from business drama to family-friendly CGI action fest also broadens the targeted audience base. Brands that have a dedicated fan base are an easy sell: Air has been described as “Moneyball for sneakerheads,” and the D&D fanbase certainly showed up for a blockbuster that, in a way, legitimized their nerdy hobby as a mainstream cultural phenomenon. Judging by the various memes that the Barbie movie has generated in the months leading up to its release, fans of the iconic Mattel dolls are certainly well aware of this upcoming blockbuster.
This recent shift also dovetails nicely with the developing trend of brands seeking to elevate their storytelling to stand out in a world of increasingly fragmented attention. Often, this has been done through collaboration with entertainment brands. Luxury brand Loewe has introduced three annual collections designed in collaboration with Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli, and Kim Kardashian’s fashion brand Skims was quick to tap two breakout stars from hit series The White Lotus for a new campaign. Some brands, such as Mattel and Red Bull, have developed their in-house content production arm to pump out digital video content as both marketing material and an engagement tool. Therefore, brand storytelling moving onto the big silver screen is a logical next step in the evolution of content marketing, as marketers continue to chase the legitimizing aura of prestige that a wide theatrical release still carries, however faded that may be nowadays.
Brand storytelling moving onto the big silver screen is a logical next step in the evolution of content marketing.
It is also worth noting that movie adaptations of video games occupy a unique place in this larger trend. For years, video games have surpassed movies as the top-grossing entertainment medium worldwide, yet the industry still struggles to jostle for the cultural cachet that movies enjoy, especially among the older generations of consumers. In recent decades, however, Hollywood has recognized the massive untapped potential in video game IP to make hit blockbusters, yet, until recently, most attempts at adaptations have failed miserably. Starting with the two Sonic the Hedgehog movies, as well as the 2022 Uncharted movie starring Tom Holland, however, the tide finally seems to be turning as more and more successful blockbusters based on video games were embraced by audiences. The recent success of HBO series The Last of Us is also part of this ongoing trend of cross-medium pollination.
While some may lament the intrusion of such nakedly commercial titles in the world of cinema, it is perhaps best to remember that Hollywood has always been a business-first industrial complex. Filmmakers have a responsibility to reflect the world we live in, and we do unfortunately live in a world where nearly every piece of content is trying to sell you something. Like it or not, popular brands inherently play a part in pop culture, and their influence over Hollywood will likely continue to grow.
If the Barbie trailers are anything to go by, however, smart filmmakers may be able to leverage familiar brand IP to tell interesting stories that hopefully transcend beyond simply being an entertaining, feature-length commercial. Hollywood’s decreasing appetite for original, non-IP ideas in recent years certainly contributed to its desperation in finding IP in unlikely places, but, in a best-case scenario, perhaps consumer brands may just be the right partner to revive blockbuster’s cultural relevance.
Smart filmmakers may be able to leverage familiar brand IP to tell interesting stories that hopefully transcend beyond simply being a feature-length commercial.
At the end of the day, movie marketing is about promoting a cultural product, and no one knows how to market a product better than the popular consumer brands. In return, the brands tapping into movie culture with quality entertainment will remain relevant with pop culture-focused consumers, especially those of the younger generations.
