Another Way to Hit it Big!
Don’t go the old fashioned way.
Would you read this book?
This is a story about a girl falling in love with a tough rebel boxer that has “a dark side that is addictive and their relationship is a rollercoaster ride.”*
Sounds just like a normal Nicholas Sparks book, or any (or all) romantic dramas. Some would probably say yes, right?
Now, if I told you that this book was originally written about Harry Styles on a site that contains a ton of fanfiction like this one, would you still watch it? Do you still feel the same about it?
Well, you might see it anyway, because Paramount Pictures bought the rights to this story and might turn into a movie, just like Fifty Shades of Grey.
If you are intrigued to learn more about the story more, click on the link below.
Fans are making money on their side projects about their favorite shows.
Being on many social media sites, I have come across my fair share of fan art and fanfiction about celebrities and shows I watch on the big screen and TV. I have even seen fanfiction and graphic, detailed, stunning pictures drawn of YouTubers on the Internet. A bunch of sites have created spaces for vast communities of people to share their appreciation for a show in these various ways, and they are making money off it.
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There are two aspects of fan involvement: interpretive and social aspects.
The interpretive aspect (which is people taking their own spin on a canon into creative art or parody) of fan art, fan fiction and fan videos impresses me to this day. With a simple search for most shows on television or movies, one can find some sort of fan fiction about the two main characters set in a high school or in a sexual relationship.
Canons, a collection of work from an artist about the same topic or subject matter, have a massive following on sites like Tumblr and DeviantArt.
Anna Todd is only one example of this money making. In her spare time, she wrote a story about a girl falling in love. It is a pretty normal plotline in the realm of the romantic genre. This story has accumulated more than 1 billion reads on a popular online story posting platform called Wattpad.
If you would like to read more about this published four or five book series being made into a movie, click the link below.
The second aspect of fan involvement is the social aspect. With the emergence of the Internet, fandoms now have the tools for non-stop uninterrupted access to people who enjoy the same things. Sites like Tumblr, Instagram, and Archive of Our Own create societies and communities of people who come together to share a common appreciation for a canon. Conspiracy theories, shipping (wanting two characters to be in a relationship) and discussions about which shirt looks the best on them are only of the few things people talk about on these platforms. What I like and admire about these platforms is that people from all over the world are coming together. People are making connections with others who they may have never met in person (and may never actually see in person), and talking about things they like. Community is a powerful force, in both good and bad ways, but it tends to get overlooked thanks to our individualistic mindset.
Is it weird the fans rewrite or produce different versions of shows and movies in their own way? Does that help or hinder the original producers of the show or movie? Do you think it is okay for them to make money off of someone else’s idea? Do you think communities of fans deserved the stigma attached to the word “fandom”?
Overall, an old idiom does say that imitation is the highest form of flattery. I usually agree with this idiom. Heck, “50 Shades of Grey,” a blockbuster movie that seduced viewers in theaters across the country on Valentine’s Day in 2015, was original Twilight fan fiction.
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*Quoted from the second link, Deadline.
