Industry disruptors seem to be popping up in every digital sector these days. From social media to sales and marketing, technology is advancing at a rapid rate, gifting smaller companies and developers the tools they need to compete with the Goliaths of their industry.
And when it comes to Goliaths, perhaps none reign as tall over their presiding industry than the movie-making machine that is Hollywood (India and Asia also make a strong argument for cinema dominance).
That said, cinema—not just in Hollywood, but on a global scale—has seen a drastic downswing in revenue due to the Covid crisis and attention-siphoning from streaming giants like Netflix, Amazon, and Disney+.
That brings us back to digital disruption. There exists a technology that’s slowly but surely razing and rebuilding the financial industry and industries adjacent to it. You may have heard of it: cryptocurrency.
Blockchain, the force behind cryptocurrency, is currently utilized in a bevy of sectors, the use cases for the technology growing by the day. How, then, can Hollywood harness the power of blockchain technology to bolster its bottom-line in the face of unprecedented box-office woes? Turns out, one company is already laying the groundwork.
Mogul Productions is a decentralized film financing company (DeFiFi) using Ethereum-based cryptocurrency to fuel its platform. STARS tokens, both purchasable and rewardable through in-app activities, are used to vote and buy a stake in a variety of films awaiting the glorious greenlight.
Films that get the winning vote push through to production, bringing their stakeholders (i.e. producers) along for the ride from script to screen. Users, dependent on their level of engagement as well as the tier of their Access Pass (there are four tiers currently to choose from), receive a slew of exclusive content and rewards like NFTs and limited merchandise. Higher tier owners can also receive access to the cast and crew (like a real producer!).
Mogul Productions is possibly the only DeFiFi company out there at the moment, presenting a sleek and slick interface, clear language, and über-transparent analytics embedded in their dashboard for the more advanced investor looking to get granular with their decision-making.
But Mogul Productions is more than simply the merging of film production and cryptocurrency. The rise of the crypto movie represents a higher level of engagement between audience and film fantasy. It remains to be seen how much “behind-the-scenes” access production studios will allow for qualified users, should this film business model find its way to the upper echelon of Hollywood’s elite, but the potential is enormous.
Imagine a day when Brad Pitt, Ryan Reynolds, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson are vying for our votes, with winning users gaining access to exclusive, on-set video journals from the respective stars and creators.
That alone is worth the price of admission. Mogul adds to that level of interactivity with exclusive NFT rewards (the NFT market is unquestionably heating up) and the ability to ride along with your proverbial racehorse as it jettisons towards box-office bucks. That’s a valuable combination of benefits and gamification-inspired systems begging the user to dive deeper into the content.
Mogul Productions, a company two years in the making, is just starting to spread its wings. If things go according to plan, Mogul will see their film slate and user base grow along with their stock in a sector where they are already the market leader. There’s no doubt that Tinseltown and other global leaders in cinema are paying attention, and why wouldn’t they? Mogul is onto something, and that something is the crypto movie. All that’s left is the Hollywood ending.