Another day, another dollar… Actually, 500 million dollars!
Announcing their sale of eOne to Lionsgate, toy giant Hasbro kickstarted this quarter’s earnings call. However, they did not forget to comment on the future of the Transformers franchise as well as the future of other entertainment franchises. Hasbro will keep the entertainment development aspect of its own brands under a new banner titled Hasbro Entertainment. But, they will look towards partners (ex: Paramount Pictures) to carry out the executions.
“Hasbro Entertainment will be the new marquis for our ongoing entertainment efforts after the sale closes, under the leadership of Olivier Dumont, the current head of eOne Family Brands. Hasbro Entertainment’s mission is to develop, finance, and produce entertainment based on the rich vault of Hasbro-owned brands. We will bring to life new original ideas designed to fuel all areas of Hasbro’s blueprint including toys, publishing, gaming, licensed consumer products, and location-based entertainment.
We will retain a focused team of creative development and business affairs experts to shepherd the 30+ Hasbro-based projects in development working with the best studios and distribution platforms in Hollywood including ongoing development of the Transformers and G.I. Joe franchises, Play-Doh, D&D, Magic: The Gathering and our board game portfolio.
As part of the sale, we expect to move to an asset-lite model for future live-action entertainment, relying on licensing and partnerships with select co-productions like our previously announced Transformers One animated film and the D&D live-action television series, both with our partners at Paramount.“
Regarding the quarter, Hasbro had this to say:
“Within Franchise Brands we delivered significant Q2 revenue growth in Transformers and Dungeons & Dragons driven by the uplift from the movie releases. Additionally, Peppa Pig grew as a result of growth in entertainment and digital gaming.”
Hasbro also made a good comment in connection to the financial performance of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts:
“Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is one of the top box office performers of the year and has driven an 83% improvement in Transformers’ point of sales since its release.”
During the Q&A Session, CEO Chris Cocks stated that Baldur’s Gate 3 video game is likely to financially outperform all of Hasbro’s entertainment efforts throughout the past 5 years.
GizmoTron
Nintendo has done its fair share of pissing off the video game community lately, so don't sell them short.
The thing is none of that mattered because, well, the movie was Mario. People were still going to go see it no matter what they think of Nintendo. People were still going to take kids to see it.
Rodimus Prime
If Nintendo had been trying to legally claim all forms of fanart as theirs, then it would have. Because what WotC was doing was the equivalent of that.
T-Hybrid
If pissed off fans is why D&D failed why was Mario one of the biggest animated movies ever despite the plethora of fans pissed about the decision to cast Chris Pratt?
PrimeBot
Yeah I feel this movie would have bombed either way. Even if it came out in a different month.
WishfulThinking
DnD has a bigger audience with 5e, for sure. But even when we multiply that group by exponents, it's still only a small percentage of the GMA. Sure, the slice of pie is bigger. But were talking going from 10% to 20% of the overall ticket sales, I'm certain. The movie had to resonate beyond the Critical Role fandom.
John Titor
I thought Stranger Things had a big impact too
RazorX3000
Very interesting read. Thanks!
Confused Millennial
I call it the "Charlie Watson effect" (after the character, obvs). You have audiences that have a decade of experience/familiarity with stuff-blowing-up action blockbusters, a library of media from many different eras and genres, growing familiarity with AI/robots/drones in everyday life, and plenty of financial strain and existential dread. And nobody knows how to reach them, which is perhaps why the summer box office in many countries was stagnant or shrinking pre-Barbenheimer in spite of an impressive line-up (a critically and commercially successful MCU entry, a critically and commercially successful Spider-Verse entry, a critically acclaimed Tom Cruise flick, and everything from Indy to ROTB to Pixar to the Flash) and which is why there have been so many left-field/fluky hits. 2023 audience are as different from 2019 audiences as Americans are from Hungarians, and almost as far apart as 2019 Americans are to 1987 Transformers characters.
Rodimus Prime
Yes, but don't take my word for it.
Who’s Playing Dungeons & Dragons These Days? The Usual Fans, and Then Some. (Published 2022).
RazorX3000
Im going to assume you’re a dnd fan lol
Rodimus Prime
Prior to stuff like Critical Roll and Game of Thrones, it wasn't. These as well as the lock downs caused it to skyrocket. As of 5th edition, it is much more popular.
RazorX3000
Still wouldn’t have added much to the box office. I’m just not sold on the idea that the DnD fanbase is anywhere near large enough to nearly single-handedly influence a DnD movie’s box office. Either way, movie didn’t do that well. What if’s are pointless.
Rodimus Prime
Well, some are like my wife and were freaked out by dolls as a child. I got punched for asking if she wanted to see it.
Yes, because many of the people who would have gone to see it multiple times were absolutely pissed.
RazorX3000
…do you seriously think the general audience knew about any of that? As someone who’s on social media a ton and keeps up to date with most things entertainment related.. uh.. yeah no, not a single soul outside of some super small dnd hardcore community even knew about any of that. The movie didn’t do super well because.. it’s DND. Not exactly a respectable brand to the general audience. Most people still just see it as a nerd thing. The general audience just didn’t think it looked interesting enough to go see, good reviews or not. It is what it is. People tend to say “If it’s a good movie, people will go see it” which is only true if it holds general interest in the first place. There’s several movies that release every other month that have damn near perfect critic scores, but barely make money or trend online because, well, average people simply don’t care lol.
Also, I know there’s lots of DnD fans. But.. exactly just how large do you think the fanbase is? Are you assuming if the entire fanbase united together to go see the movie (even if multiple times) that the film would’ve been a lot more successful? Because I doubt that. Like, really doubt that lol.
Primus Wept
We’re all trying to figure out modern audiences. I don’t think it’s as simple as (movie good = success) or (movie bad = flop)
There were amazing movies this year that flopped. DND was fantastic and flopped, Mission Impossible is getting curb stomped
At the same time I don’t see any bad movies doing stellar. If Adam Sandler released another Jack and Jill type movie in theaters nobody would watch it like they would in the 2010s.
I guess in order to survive in the post pandemic world you not only have to be a good movie but you gotta be a good movie that markets itself well enough to convince all the people shopping for great value products at Walmart to spend these gas prices going to see a movie for $20. And even if you are all that, you still might fail
GizmoTron
For what it's worth, the DnD fans I know all went to see that movie and really liked even loved it. Two of them even saw it twice.
(I myself fall more into the General Audience category for that brand, and I haven't even bothered to rent it yet.)
T-Hybrid
They did such a great job building a cast who could carry a franchise. But people wanted big dumb action and didn't realize that'd have been everything after.
WishfulThinking
I'm pretty certain that fiasco is overplayed on its impact. Yeah, there were some boycotters. There were also a lot of DnD fans that still showed up. In the end, it has to appeal to the general movie-goer and I don't think Joe and Jill Cool understood it wasn't just either another Jumanji movie or a sequel to the awful 2000 movie. Once word of mouth got out that it was a decent movie, it was too late…everyone was going to see Super Mario Bros. instead and said they'd wait for streaming.
While that did the movie no favors, far worse was levied at Barbie and it's done great.
Again, I think the general movie audience just didn't understand what kind of a movie they were going to see. I still think Gran Turismo will fail for similar reasons. These are game movies without the games, so it's difficult to explain to the GMA just what the hell they're supposed to go see. Super Mario Bros., on the other hand, was exactly what people expected, coupled with a wider familiarity.
(BTW, there are still religious people who refuse to watch Dungeons and Dragons. That doesn't help either.)
But now that DnD is a known quantity, I'm thinking a sequel would potentially be the franchise's "Revenge of the Fallen", where the sequel outperforms the original. At least the TV show is still on the table. That's probably the best place for it to go, honestly, as DnD tends to play out in episodic sessions anyway – so the format will fit the form.
Autobot Burnout
That's what I figured was the most likely thing, but it doesn't explain why either Caple or Bay said it was Lorenzo or the Paramount CEO, respectively. Just say it was Hasbro's call and leave it at that, instead of trying to give credit to people who didn't really have much say in the matter.
DnD was hurt largely because of the horrendous situation with the Open Game License that nuked the majority of goodwill in that community in the name of blatant profiteering off of things Hasbro declared the right to steal from player-created content. As well as the movie's own writers bizarrely boasting about how they 'emasculated' the male leads of the film (especially given they absolutely are not emasculated, they're just not the physical DPS classes, and the wizard straight up is the only reason they're able to defeat the villain).
The movie totally could have done better, it's really a fun little film that relies less on CGI than you'd think (lots of puppeteering and it's done well), but Hasbro's mismanagement and alienation of the fanbase did it no favors.
PrimeBot
Get a bunch of guys that work on an oil rig to block that sucker up hehe