Creating Your Own Multimedia Story World Franchise: What Josef Bastian’s Folktellers Universe Reveals About Developing, Pitching, and Protecting Your Intellectual Property

Storyteller reading a book as lions, dragons, and unicorns emerge from the smoke.

It’s a rags-to-riches story every artist dreams of: Your unknown but brilliant intellectual property gets picked up by a publishing house or movie studio and transforms into a best-selling book series, film franchise, television show, theme park attraction, and merchandising empire. It happened to J.K. Rowling. It happened to Stephenie Meyer. And in this age of multi-billion-dollar transmedia franchises that tell stories across multiple media platforms, it could happen to your story world.

But what if you don’t want to spend years waiting to be discovered by a book agent or Hollywood executive? What if you want to take control of your enterprise from day one, assemble a creative team, and set up your own meetings with movie producers and IP buyers?

Then you might want to take a page from Josef Bastian’s story and learn how he created Folkteller LLC, a transmedia entertainment company that supports his multiple creative endeavors. Through this multimedia content platform, Bastian has launched his award-winning YA fantasy book series Folktellers: Excerpts from an Unknown Guidebook. And with help from transmedia partners, Carl Winans,  Stephen Sadler, Amy S. Weber, Patrick McEvoy, and Ahmet Zappa, Bastian has partnered with Hollywood heavyweights to adapt the book series into a live action TV show.

Folktellers Map
Taking the time to craft a solid story world canon enabled Bastian to create two YA fantasy book series, establishing a strong core for his transmedia entertainment enterprise.

Now the creative producer of his own transmedia enterprise, the Folktellers Universe, Bastian seeks to open his story world to other artists, storytellers, musicians, and game designers who can expand his original vision. And while some transmedia franchises develop through chance, the Folktellers Team is building their transmedia story universe intentionally, as they grow their brand and intellectual properties.

But while things may be moving quickly for Folkteller LLC, it wasn’t always this way. In fact, it took fifteen years of planning and networking for Bastian to create his story world. Yet it’s this preparation that makes Folktellers such an attractive property for production companies and gives this creative team an edge in fast-tracking their transmedia projects.

I spoke with both Josef Bastian and Stephen Sadler to learn the behind-the-scenes story on Folkteller LLC and hear their views on how modern stories should be built. Their insights reveal that creating — and protecting — a solid story world canon is vital in ensuring your franchise’s integrity as you build partnerships, establish an audience, and release your transmedia story universe to the public.

How Resurrecting an Old Legend Launched a New Transmedia Franchise

Nain Rouge Red Dwarf
Bastian’s original YA series, Nain Rouge, was born from an old French legend and told through multiple mediums, including novels and comic books. Credit: Patrick McEvoy.

In 2008, Josef Bastian lost his job in Detroit, Michigan at a time when the recession caused many people to lose work. During this period, he came across the local Detroit legend of the “Nain Rouge” (Red Dwarf) a supernatural creature from French folklore who appears as a harbinger of doom before bad events. Intrigued, Bastian worked with co-founding partner, Carl Winans, to resurrect the legend as the Nain Rouge, a middle-grade fantasy book series that ties the red dwarf to Detroit’s economic hardships. The stories follow two teens who discover they are linked to a Nain Rouge curse that drains both their town’s prosperity and their lives.

When the books took off regionally, Bastian, feeling the story could attract new readers as a comic book, partnered with Patrick McEvoy, a Marvel Comics artist to adapt the stories into the graphic novel Nain Rouge: The Red Legend. Funded by a Kickstarter program that raised $20,000 and published by Caliber Comics, the experience showed Bastian the possibilities of telling stories on multiple platforms.

Interested in further exploring the power of folktales and the people who keep them alive, Bastian came up with the concept of the Folktellers — dimension-hopping guardians who travel the multiverse to drive back the Shadow People, evil creatures who feed on powerful stories. By reciting stories of power, Folktellers ward off the Shadow People while also inspiring the people who need to hear the tales.

Bastian conceived of an entire series of middle-grade Folktellers stories and grew interested in telling his story across multiple media platforms. Seeking out thought leader and CEO of transmedia production company Starlight Runner Entertainment Jeff Gomez, Bastian asked for advice on how to turn his concept into a transmedia story world. Gomez, who’s helped Disney, 20th Century Fox, and other studios develop their transmedia story worlds, agreed that Bastian had something, but urged him to finish creating the canon of his story world before releasing it.

“Jeff told me that once the canon’s out there, you’re going to give other writers and artists a chance to work on the platform and build off of that — but you need to have your foundational work done,” Bastian recalls. “Because if you don’t, then the story world will lack a center, and  can splinter off in too many directions. You need the canon as your nucleus to ground the world you’ve created.”

Taking Gomez’s advice, Bastian spent the next several years finishing what became the first of two separate book series, each eight books long. He fleshed out the mythology of his story world, adding elements such as Guardians and Travelers who journey alongside Folktellers. The first series focuses on Aaron Anderson, a teenager training to be a Folkteller, while the second centers on Zinnia, a different Folkteller, whose adventures cross with Aaron’s. At one point, the characters enter the universe of the Nain Rouge, connecting all of Bastian’s story worlds into a shared universe.

“Taking my time was good because there were a couple times that I wrote myself into a corner and if the books were out, I would have eliminated my ability to go back and change things in the early parts of the series,” notes Bastian. “The goal was to create that canon, that foundation, but also not to close it off with a happily ever after. I wanted to give the reader closure, and a meaningful pay-off, but show you can still take the story in any direction you want. It’s really that rich of a world.”

Thanks to this approach, Bastian produced a wealth of creative content. Getting that content out, however, would require additional support.

Finding the Right Creative Connections to Develop Folkteller LLC

Original FolkTellers cover art with mystical storyteller
Folktellers: Excerpts from an Unknown Guidebook expands Bastian’s interest in folktales into a multi-media story that can be shared through books, television, music, and YouTube videos. Credit: Patrick McEvoy.

Once again, Bastian partnered with McEvoy — now Senior Art Director for Folkteller LLC — to provide illustrations and cover art for Folktellers: Excerpts from an Unknown Guidebook. However, finding additional partners to help accomplish his goals proved challenging.

“I was in the wilds of Detroit , which isn’t known as the entertainment capitol of the world,” he states, recalling the challenge of breaking into the entertainment world from the outside. “I needed to get my elevator pitch tight. I needed to talk to people in the publishing industry. I needed to talk to people in the film industry. In television. In gaming. You hear nothing, and then you get a few people who say, ‘Okay, that’s interesting.’ Or ‘Oh, I know someone.’ You’ll get a few leads, follow up on those leads, and sometimes they lead to a dead end and sometimes they lead to another lead.”

One lead who became much more was Stephen Sadler who attended one of Bastian’s investment pitches. A Detroit-based inventor whose digital platform IntensifyDigital has been used in over sixty social media movie campaigns for Hollywood studios including Disney and DreamWorks, Sadler realized Bastian had written enough content to support an entire fictional universe. Seeing an opportunity, he encouraged Bastian to immediately bring his story world to film and television.

“I’ve never seen anyone write like him,” Sadler says of Bastian. “He’s just finished the sixteenth book in the series. This project is a long-term investment of time and money. To do something like this is big. It’s not for the faint-hearted. But the people you meet makes it worth every minute of it.”

Leveraging his Hollywood contacts, Sadler introduced Bastian to figures in the entertainment industry, including musician/producer Ahmet Zappa and Charles Segars, producer of Disney’s National Treasure franchise. They brought other people into their team, including entertainment lawyers, sculptors, screenwriters, and composers who developed additional content for Folkteller LLC, including pitch bibles, TV series treatments, and even a theme song, The Story of Us All, produced by III Worlds Music Group (2 Fast 2 Furious, xXx: State of the Union) and Death By Lipstick Productions.

“When it comes to team-building, I believe the people need to have the same type of mentality and vision for [the project] to be successful,” says Sadler. “With me, it’s a slow process. I meet someone, I spend time with them. I make friends with them and once I’m friends with them, they become part of the team. I won’t just hire someone and go, ‘Hey, let’s see how this goes.’”

Bastian is of a similar mindset. “I have them read my books and then I ask them what they got from the stories. And if I hear the echo from them, it’s ‘Okay, you get it.’”

Gaining a team that can put together so much collateral marketing material enables Bastian to send out the most relevant materials when pitching or promoting his projects. While this multi-media marketing approach is useful for generating buzz online, it’s essential when pitching Folktellers to IP buyers.

Pitching Folktellers to Film and TV Production Companies

FolkTellers Cover Art Main Characters
Pitching books to media companies like Netflix requires a highly visual presentation. Credit: Patrick McEvoy

“When you pitch to Netflix, it has to be quick,” Sadler emphasizes. “It’s not something where you can go into the detail of everything. You have to catch their attention very quickly — and if you do, then you get to the next level. It’s not like one and done. They vet you, and if you’re vetted, you go to the next level.”

Bastian agrees, remembering it was a struggle just to get people to read even his condensed material.

“We’re out in Hollywood and you get your big meeting and they give you five minutes,” he states. “And they’re like, ‘You sent us this beautiful pitch bible, but we didn’t read it. And the books — we’re never going to read those. So, what do you got?’ And you’ve got five minutes to convince them to enter your story world.”

One effective way Bastian found he could pitch his story world was to convey it through a medium IP buyers understand — visuals. This meant showcasing the artwork and character designs created by Patrick McEvoy. It also meant working with film veteran, Amy S. Weber to produce live action trailers of the Folktellers books to show what the stories could look like on television.

“And what happens is, if they like it, they’re like — tell me more,” he says. “So, you tell them more and they’re like, ‘We need to look at your pitch bible.’ And then they read it. And then they’re like, ‘You know what? I’m going to have a couple of my assistants read that first book.’ So, you have to condense, condense, condense to the point where they’re not even looking at what you just condensed because they’re looking at you just talking. But if they are interested, you need to have everything ready. And if they get to the point where they’re actually reading something, you’re pretty far down the road.”

Folktellers Story World Universe
Original artwork of his Folktellers Universe helps Bastian effectively communicate his vision to IP buyers within a short five-minute pitch. Credit: Patrick McEvoy.

One thing that gave Folktellers an edge was that the books had already been written. This made the series different from even certain popular TV shows.

“When we met with Netflix, one of the things they asked was, ‘Is this series done? Because we do not want to get into a situation like a George R.R. Martin Game of Thrones where the series isn’t done and we have to figure out how to wrap the series up,’” Bastian recalls. “So, if you’re an author, they want to know if your series is done if they’re going to buy. Because if the book series takes off and the TV series takes off, eventually they got to meet somewhere – the ending’s going to have to be close to the same.”

Bastian finds this desire for completed content is driving producers to purchase and reboot classic TV series for today’s streaming service audiences who will gladly binge-watch entire seasons of a new TV show, particularly one with an existing following. This growing appetite for serialized content is also something Sadler believes Folktellers can satisfy.

Harry Potter is not set up for serialized content,” he states. “It’s set up for long movies. But the way Josef writes his books, it’s more like the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew series. And streaming services are all looking for something that’s lasting. They don’t want something that will end after a couple episodes or even one season. They’re looking for something that’ll help get them more subscribers and make more money.”

Understanding this aspect of the entertainment industry is key to selling an IP. Bastian, who’s written his own article on Netflix corporate culture, reflects on the high-pressure, high-stakes nature of the industry.

“Netflix hires their buyers out of Harvard and Yale — Ivy League schools. These are twenty-somethings with MBAs, and they have a background in data analytics. And [Netflix] will say, ‘Okay, you’ve got a $200 million dollar budget this year to buy properties in these genres. And here are all the data analytics tools. So, you’re making the decisions. But you’re accountable for them too.

And the thing with entertainment is — you don’t know if something is going to be great. You might have a quality storyline or pitch, but it could get produced poorly. So much can go wrong and so much can go right and it’s not in your control. And that’s how the industry is. Everyone is crazy busy and they’re making decisions on the fly even though they have all these tools for data analytics. And whatever happens in the world could push you up the ranks or push you down. And unfortunately, as a creator and someone who’s not in the industry, that’s what you’re up against.”

Nevertheless, as the creative producer of his own transmedia universe, Bastian and his partners also feel adamant about protecting the brand identity of Folkteller LLC, which has led them to make some unexpected decisions.

“We’ve turned down funding,” Bastian admits. “We’ve also turned down projects. Early on, they wanted to make the Nain Rouge into a horror movie. You definitely could — it’s very dark — but Folkteller LLC can’t put its name on an adult slasher/horror film. We turned down a couple million dollars early on.”

Connecting with and Expanding the Folktellers Audience

FolkTellers gathering at attention
The Folktellers Universe is ever-expanding and invites other artists, writers, and creators to add their own content to the story universe using multiple storytelling platforms. Credit: Patrick McEvoy.

As the Folktellers Team work to develop the Folktellers TV show, they’re also focused on reaching out to and expanding the target audience of their story world — middle grade readers and fantasy fans. The first two books in the eight-book series, Phases of the Moon and Cave in the Rock have been published and are available on Amazon with a third book, Shadows on the Silver Strings, set to be released in Fall 2021. To help promote the books, Folkteller LLC has put together a Storytelling for Literacy Program that allows Bastian to go into schools with a unique transmedia educational program.

“We had special ‘Folkteller Kits’ with little Oscar trophies, runner-up Oscar trophies, a rolled up red carpet, and all the books packaged inside,” Sadler states. “They went to the classroom and the students would read the books and at the end of the books they’d create a YouTube video and give themselves an alternate ending based on whatever character they liked out of the book. And then we’d do a contest and we’d walk them down the red carpet.”

By providing the tools that enabled young readers to create their own Folktellers stories in a digital video medium, Bastian and Sadler make their audience active participants in their story universe, while encouraging both literary and digital literacy. The student-produced YouTube videos promote greater engagement between author and audience while expanding Folktellers Universe content and creating greater brand awareness. Such strategies will become more important for Bastian as he makes the move from content creator to creative producer.

Moving forward, Folktellers has created a free, homeschool version of their “Folkteller Kits” to address the needs of at-home educators. They also plan on creating more digital platforms to help other artists learn the steps for creating additional digital content and sharing stories. This includes Folktellers LLC’s plan for resurrecting obscure folklore and legends or “Cryptofolk” through multiple transmedia platforms and sharing them with a global audience. Visitors to the Folktellers website are encouraged to share stories and local legends that they’d like to see in the Folktellers Universe where characters regularly travel to different countries and worlds to experience myths and legends firsthand.

Owning Your Story World and How to Protect Your Intellectual Property

Folktellers balancing precariously on a disc
Owning and protecting your IP is essential when building your story world.

During his visits to schools, Bastian offers a key piece of advice to students on the power of storytelling:

“Every day you get up in the morning is an opportunity to tell your own story because that’s what life is – the story of us all. It’s up to you to decide: What will MY story be? What story am I going to tell? We are all the makers and tellers of our own stories. And as human beings,  we need to own it, and be accountable for ourselves, while respecting the stories of others. Because if you don’t, someone else will tell your story for you. And you won’t like it.”

It’s a powerful message — and one that Folktellers are heeding as they take ownership of their own intellectual property.

“We own all of our IP,” states Bastian. “Everything that we have is copyrighted and trademarked. We’ve paid the intellectual property lawyers to secure all that. We own our name — Folktellers LLC — and all before any dollar was made. It’s not cheap to do, but it’s really important. Otherwise, someone could just take your creative work. As a writer it’s easier to protect your copy because those protections are more apparent. But I feel that when you’re looking at intellectual properties and franchises, it shows you’re serious about what you’re doing.”

Sadler agrees, adding that it’s particularly important to take ownership of how a brand is promoted on social media.

“We have ‘Folktellers’ with an ‘s’ locked down on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, everything. Why? Because we want that to be our digital footprint and we don’t want another brand to hijack that. And I think that’s the most important thing these days. You have to lock down everywhere because you don’t know where your audience is or where it will be in the future. And as new platforms come out, you should be looking for those and immediately lock down your name because if you don’t then someone else will do it and what ends up happening is that they start controlling your narrative — and it’s your narrative.”

It’s a considerable investment of time, money, and manpower. But as the Folktellers Universe continues growing, it’s also another step in this entertainment company’s mission to maintain its own vision.

“There’s nothing wrong with being patient and making sure the opportunities you’re taking are the right ones for that intellectual property,” Sadler emphasizes. “Because if some group decides to pivot and go in a different direction and all of a sudden, your IP becomes something not in line with what your story is, it stops being about what you’re creating. So, be patient. Control the narrative. Control the digital footprint.”

Your Shared Universe on a Budget: What The Blair Witch Project and Video Palace Teach Indie Filmmakers About Building a Successful Multimedia Franchise

Blair Witch Project Poster

Multiplatform story worlds and transmedia storytelling have helped franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars dominate the entertainment industry. The strategy of getting their audiences invested in a massive narrative told through movies, television shows, comic books, video games, and other media, has allowed for the Walt Disney Company to earn 94.9 subscribers largely thanks to two programs, The Mandalorian and WandaVision. Likewise, the MCU shared universe has enjoyed a worldwide box office revenue of 22.56 billion U.S. dollars from its films alone.

Of course, in order to earn such massive profits, the studios had to put up a substantial investment—the production budget for an average MCU movie is $190,350,000, and Disney+ invested between $1.5 to 1.75 billion in its content in 2020. While this seems like a lot, it should be emphasized that Disney spent relatively little on its programming budget compared to businesses like Netflix that spent $16 billion on original content in 2020. This indicates that transmedia success does not rely on big budgets but the skillful use of transmedia projects that connect well with audiences.

Indeed, one of the greatest (and earliest) examples of transmedia storytelling came not from a major movie studio but a group of independent filmmakers promoting a low-budget film that became one of the biggest media phenomena of its time —The Blair Witch Project (1999). Through their creative use of multiplatform narrative, this $60,000 indie project went on to earn nearly $250 million worldwide, making it one of the most successful independent films in history.

The success of indie transmedia projects like The Blair Witch Project aren’t isolated incidents either. In 2018, Blair Witch filmmaker Michael Monello and producer Nick Braccia created a new low-budget transmedia story world in Video Palace, a “media horror” saga told through scripted podcasts and prose stories. Its success reveals that, thanks to the variety of storytelling platforms available today, producing transmedia projects on a budget is not only possible but an ideal way for storytellers to build their audiences and test the viability of their stories.

I spoke with both Monello and Braccia, who shared their thoughts on The Blair Witch franchise and how independent creators can leverage transmedia techniques. Their insights reveal that a keen understanding of audience sensibilities, and not big budgets, is the actual deciding factor in developing profitable media franchises.

How The Blair Witch Project Launched a Transmedia Viral Phenomenon

The Blair Witch Project Transmedia Storytelling
While it began as an independent film, early reactions to the Blair Witch Project inspired the filmmakers to make it a transmedia storytelling project that immersed audiences in its story world.

The Blair Witch Project was conceived in 1993 when indie filmmakers Michael Monello, Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez, and others developed the mythology of the Blair Witch, a Maryland woman found guilty of witchcraft in the late 1700s who reappeared throughout the centuries to murder multiple victims. Their fictional legend evolved into a 35-page screenplay which became the basis for a “found footage” movie (one of the very first) about three student filmmakers who hiked into the Black Hills to interview residents about the Blair Witch, only to become her next victims.

To create the story’s documentary style, the filmmakers shot the movie on home video cameras and relied on improvised dialogue from the actors. This enhanced the film’s gritty, realistic tone, and when clips of the unfinished movie wound up on television, the positive response inspired the storytellers to take their project in an unexpected direction.

“We found ourselves in the unique position of having people interested in our work before it was done,” recalls Monello, who now works as the creative director of his own transmedia ad agency Campfire. “And so, it became – how do we keep them entertained so they don’t lose interest? For us it was about exploring the story with fans while we were still editing the film.”

This led the filmmakers to create The Blair Witch website, a proto-transmedia extension of the film that delved into and expanded on the mythology in ways the film did not. Visitors to the site found a detailed timeline of the Blair Witch’s alleged activities over the last two hundred years. They could view taped interviews of family members who discussed the “disappearance” of the film’s main characters. And they could even watch news clips of anchormen reporting on the search for the missing filmmakers.

The result was a narrative more gripping than the movie on its own. Since the website was presented not as a marketing device but a “real” record of the Blair Witch legend, it became a new platform for audiences to experience this story world. Some visitors weren’t sure if what they were seeing was real or fictional and began sharing the website with others while building their own fan sites. This created an immersive experience that encouraged audience participation while building anticipation for the movie – which was now seen as just part of the greater Blair Witch story.

“People think what excited the audience was the mythology,” Monello states. “And I think that was a big part of it. But I think what really excited and energized the fan community was the fact that they were a part of building and creating the mythology and spreading it. And so, they owned it.”

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Blair Witch Project storytellers created websites, mockumentaries, and dossiers that let fans participate in the mythology through multiple transmedia properties.

While Monello emphasizes the transmedia aspect of The Blair Witch Project evolved organically, the enthusiastic response to the website shows the power of transmedia storytelling lies in audience connection, not big budget marketing. In fact, according to Jeff Gomez, CEO of transmedia production company Starlight Runner Entertainment, The Blair Witch Project stands as one of the greatest transmedia marketing case studies.

“By spreading the word about this site, you were getting a charge out of letting someone else in on a weird secret,” states Gomez in his 2007 post The Internet Explosion. “You were validated and celebrated for your participation in the Blair Witch happening, right there, on the fly, in real time. You and your friends could connect, theorize, and explore this world to the point where the movie became far more than a self-contained piece of entertainment. It was simply a component in a greater experience, and that made it magical.”

Today, Gomez’s studio helps major companies like Coca-Cola and Sony Pictures develop transmedia story worlds through movies, comic books, television series, video games, and other media. However, he’s never lost sight of the way modern digital technology allows storytellers of all backgrounds to create affordable forms of transmedia entertainment that reach massive audiences.

“In 1999, the Internet was still mysterious and compelling. There wasn’t a sense that so much on it can be fake news. The Blair Witch visionaries, in a very Orson Welles War of the Worlds kind of way, hijacked media platforms of their day to position a fictional story as real,” notes Gomez, referencing a 1938 radio drama where multiple actors, including legendary filmmaker Orson Welles, narrated a series of fake news bulletins about an alien invasion based on H.G. Welles’ science fiction novel War of the Worlds. The broadcasts allegedly caused panic in some listeners who believed what they were hearing was real.

Likewise, Gomez finds the Blair Witch Project filmmakers tapped into similar techniques to create their own phenomena. After film studio Artisan Entertainment bought the distribution rights for The Blair Witch Project, they continued building on the transmedia marketing campaign by producing a realistic mockumentary, Curse of the Blair Witch, which aired on the Sci-Fi Channel, continued to play up the “real” legend of the Blair Witch, and massively amplified audience awareness. The Blair Witch Project: A Dossier was published by Onyx books soon after, offering an additional way to experience the story through faux newspaper clippings, police notes, and journal extracts, and a series of comics called The Blair Witch Chronicles was published by Oni Press, further delving into the history of the cursed forests of Burkittsville, Maryland, where the film took place.

Much like Welles’ broadcast, the Blair Witch website, film, mockumentary, comics, and books used multiple media platforms to tap into audience fears about the supernatural and unknown, enhancing the story’s appeal (although once the movie was released, most people likely knew it was fictional). But where Welles’ radio broadcast was an isolated event that did not allow for much audience interaction, the Internet now allows audiences to become active participants in these story worlds by immediately interacting with the filmmakers and other fans online. This, Gomez emphasizes, is what transmedia storytelling is really about—and why transmedia marketing is such a powerful technique.

The Expanding Blair Witch Transmedia Story World

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Later Blair Witch transmedia storytelling developed new mythologies that did not mesh as well with the original filmmakers’ vision.

The original filmmakers helped craft the first Blair Witch transmedia campaign with a focus on how their audience resonated with their mythology. Once the movie became a hit, however, the Blair Witch franchise was taken over by new moviemakers who had their own ideas for how the story should evolve. This, Monello feels, caused the story world to evolve in ways that weren’t consistent with the original mythology, resulting in a less effective transmedia story.

“When the second movie [Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows (2000)] came out, that was clearly a version of Blair Witch as that filmmaker perceived it – as an outsider, as someone who wasn’t involved in any of this,” he states. “They lost sight of what the story was because they were only looking at the movie. And there’s all this other stuff around it, and a lot of it was audience participation. And none of the other films had audience participation in any form.”

While the Blair Witch franchise continued offering new stories through other transmedia storytelling platforms such as young adult novels and video games, Monello feels the franchise as a whole lost sight of the storyline the original filmmakers developed and the fans felt they owned in favor of new stories that were only tangentially related to the Blair Witch legend.

Monello’s observations reflect an issue with other transmedia projects such as the DC Extended Universe. Where other shared movie universes such as the MCU rely on a producer like Kevin Feige to conduct the overall direction of their transmedia properties, creating consistency throughout the movie and TV series plotlines, the DCEU divides control of its franchise among multiple creative visionaries. The result is an assortment of work that can offer cinematic masterpieces like Todd Philips’ Joker, but do not offer any real consistency among the divergent storylines.

The numbers back Monello up. While the Blair Witch sequels all made money, they don’t come close to the success of the original. Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows grossed $47.7 million against a $15 million dollar budget. Likewise, the 2016 follow up Blair Witch grossed just over $45 million against a $5 million dollar budget. Audience response was generally unfavorable, with Book of Shadows gaining only an 18% approval score from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics citing a formulaic plot as opposed to the innovative participatory route taken in the original movie.

“More modest or independent franchises like Blair Witch are driven by hardcore fan bases,” said Gomez. “They’ve fallen in love with the minutia and the cosmology of the story world, inclusive of the transmedia extensions. As a filmmaker, if you don’t observe this lore, this canonicity, then you are disrespecting it. If the filmmakers don’t care, why should the fans? Even if the films are profitable, the appetite for anything more is diminished. It’s all downhill from there.”

Given the direction The Blair Witch Project went, what lessons can indie creators learn from this early transmedia case study on how to approach modern independent storytelling? Monello and Braccia both offer insights based on their most recent transmedia story, the horror podcast Video Palace.

Video Palace: New Transmedia Entry Points

Video Palace transmedia storytelling art
Monello and Braccia’s new horror project, Video Palace, shows that transmedia storytelling can be accomplished through new low-budget mediums like podcasts.

Born out of a concept pitch to AMC Networks’ horror streaming service Shudder, Video Palace is a ten-part scripted podcast about a young couple’s investigation of the mysterious “white tapes,” vintage video cassettes linked to a series of disasters and the otherworldly figure known only as “The Eyeless Man.” Funded by Shudder, the project used professional SAG actors, making it, in Monello’s words, “a hybrid between an indie podcast and a studio production.”

The end result earned an enthusiastic fan base that promotes the story through online reviews and discussion threads on social network sites like Reddit. Reviewers regularly ask for a second season (which may happen) and Monello indicates there’s also interest in making a Video Palace film.

“Every day new people are coming into podcasts, which is really interesting because, unlike a film where everyone pretty much knows about it, it seems like people are discovering Video Palace for the first time because they didn’t get into podcasts until one really grabbed them in and they go exploring,” observes Monello. “So, even though we made the podcast almost two years ago, it still feels new, because there are new people finding it and talking about it much later. So, it’s a little bit more evergreen.”

The podcast’s success confirms what Monello stresses to independent storytellers – that investing in a potentially expensive feature film is not always a direction that creators need to take to build an audience these days. Sometimes, a less expensive set of launch platforms for your transmedia property offer a better entryway into your mythology.

“Dollars to dollars, the production of the Video Palace podcast was less than what it cost to get Blair Witch from an idea to premiering at Sundance,” he states. “To create a franchise, I never felt like you had to have a movie. The podcast is almost like a test – if an audience takes to it, we can expand on it. And if they don’t, well, we still made something we’re proud of.”

In the case of Video Palace, the positive response convinced the creators to building their story world – this time with a short horror story collection, Video Palace: In Search of the Eyeless Man. Released in October 2020, the book earned positive reviews and helps expand on the mythology by incorporating the creative visions of other horror storytellers. Although set in the same world as the original Video Palace podcast, the new stories deepen the story world by offering tales that explore the universe from a nostalgic or feminist viewpoint, allowing their shared universe to become more inclusive.

“We gave these established horror authors more information about the mythology of the Eyeless Man than we revealed publicly,” Monello shares, noting both he and Braccia intentionally gave the writers the freedom to develop their own stories within the constraints of their mythology. “Because we needed these stories to be consistent when we do reveal things and people can understand how everything fits together. So, now what you have are people who read the book and go, ‘Oh, now I want to listen to the podcast!’ And people who listen to the podcast who say, ‘Oh, I want more so I’ll look at the book.’ And they feed off each other.”

This symbiotic relationship re-emphasizes that modern transmedia projects can be built from low-budget platforms like books, comics, podcasts, and social media. This also gives you the power to guide your transmedia story world in the direction you want it to evolve in as new transmedia opportunities come up – particularly if you do eventually get the chance to turn your story into a film.

“I’d like to think the stories that we tell would augment the stories in the book and in the podcast, but not necessarily replicate any of them. In a film, I’d want to start from the perspective of, what’s the best story that will appeal the most in a film format?” Monello states. “We have some great stories that I think would make amazing movies – one is set in the 1950s and 1960s that’s not necessarily an origin story but gets to an early experience of the Eyeless Man. And we have another story that takes place in the 1980s.

“But when I think about film, I think you have to deliver something that makes sense for someone who hasn’t listened to the podcast or read the book,” he adds. “It’s got to be interesting on its own. The genre of Video Palace is media horror which gives us the freedom to play in any form of media. I think we all had ideas of how a transmedia franchise should be developed and this was our chance, devoid of clients and people telling us what to do to put our theories in action.”

How Modern Indie Storytellers Can Approach Multimedia Franchises

Video Palace In Search of the Eyeless Man book cover art
Monello and Braccia continue conducting their expanding transmedia world by inviting established horror writers to build their own visions within their established Video Palace mythology.

Both The Blair Witch Project and Video Palace fall into the horror genre making them particularly effective stories to share through podcasts and independent films that are popular with horror fans. However, Monello stresses that independent transmedia producers with projects in other genres need to connect with audience sensibilities in order to communicate the story on the right platforms and in the most effective ways.

“Look at where your audience is and how they like to consume media,” he states. “For us, podcasting made sense because we wanted it to be in the horror genre. If your transmedia story franchise is in the fantasy genre, a tabletop game might be a great place to start because a lot of tabletop gamers are fantasy fans, so that’s where your initial core audience is. And you can put something out there and see if they’re taking to this story world well – do they want more games in that world, do people start writing their own stories in that world? Look for the signs – are we building a fan community?”

Monello’s partner Nick Braccia notes that audio platforms like podcasts offer excellent low-cost ways to start building transmedia stories, similar to how self-published comic books and graphic novels helped earlier creators build their audience. He also feels that prose work, particularly micro fiction, can help build an audience – provided a creator knows where to share such material.

“So much of it for a young creator is calling your shot in respect to timing. And I guarantee this is going to happen – whether it’s an improv group or a live theater or whatever, whoever is thoughtful and subversive and creative enough to do fiction on Clubhouse is going to make major waves,” he states, referring to the increasingly popular audio-chat iPhone app that lets users have conversations on diverse topics in virtual rooms.

Ultimately, both Monello and Braccia emphasize that the key to developing a successful transmedia franchise, particularly for independent creators, is to let it develop organically.

“There are no people out there looking to buy a transmedia universe,” cautions Monello. “It’s very possible that when you put out that first piece of media for your transmedia universe that it’s the last piece of media for your transmedia universe. And that’s why you can’t have your mind on eighteen different pieces of media and where you’re going in the future. You have to focus on one piece and make sure it works as an individual story by itself.”

Likewise, remaining open-minded and flexible about your audience, where they prefer to receive their stories, and what types of stories they want to consume, is vital to the continued health of a transmedia universe.

“A successful transmedia narrative, by its nature, is participatory,” Monello states. “When you release your first transmedia property, you may suddenly find that a completely different group of people like it and get their stories from a place that wasn’t in your plan. But without the audience, there’s no value in the next extension unless they’re there and they’re asking for it.”

He cites a story from the Sundance premiere of The Blair Witch Project when he saw a long line of high school and college students who had become so immersed in the Blair Witch mythology, they had driven through a snow storm just to see if they could get standby tickets for a sold-out screening of the movie. Realizing how well their transmedia project had connected with such a prized demographic, he understood that they could negotiate a larger deal with the distributors – or make the money by simply screening the film themselves.

“One of the most powerful things about transmedia is your connection as a storyteller to your audience,” he says. “A script that’s just sitting in your drawer and being pitched to money people isn’t doing anything for you. But that story being put out into the world, even if it’s for free and costing you a bit of money, could potentially do something for you if you build a big enough audience. Now, you can walk into any room and pitch something that’s worth getting funded and take the next step. And that gives you power.”

_________________

This is the fourth installment in a transmedia storytelling series being written in tandem with Jeff Gomez of Starlight Runner Entertainment, one of the industry’s foremost transmedia producers. Starlight Runner consults with multiple companies from Disney to Sony to Coca-Cola to help establish their story worlds and produces transmedia content including graphic novels, videos, books, animated series, and web sites. Learn how your company can use them to produce your own full transmedia story world through narrative design, content production, licensing, merchandising, and fan cultivation.

The Transmedia Storytelling Series:

#1: How Disney+ Uses Star Wars to Dominate Digital Entertainment

#2: Ultraman: Translating a Multi-Billion Dollar Japanese Superhero Franchise for American Media

#3: Disney Marvel vs Warner Bros. DC: How Do Shared Universes Succeed or Fail?

Disney Marvel vs Warner Bros. DC: How Do Shared Universes Succeed or Fail? (And What Does Cobra Kai Have to Do with It?)

Avengers Infinity War offers an excellent example of Disney Marvel shared universe storytelling

Since Iron Man started the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2008, the MCU has continued to grow in scope—and profitability. According to Statista, as of November 2020, the MCU film franchise has earned a total worldwide box office revenue of 22.56 billion U.S. dollars with 23 films. And with the MCU continuing to branch out into new territory, such as the well-received Disney+ streaming series WandaVision (and half a dozen others now in production), the franchise will only grow in value.

Industry observers attribute the MCU’s success to its shared universe, which allows characters or events from one film to cross over into the plots of other movies and TV shows. This allows Marvel to introduce and get audiences emotionally invested in new superheroes and plotlines before developing them further in new films. Audiences follow this new content, eagerly consuming the new material since it all relates to a greater overall narrative.

However, while Marvel has built a complex and lucrative shared universe over the last decade, other companies are having a harder time competing with their own. Warner Bros, in particular, has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into its DC Extended Universe, but has not enjoyed the critical or commercial success of Marvel’s films, earning just over $5.6 billion U.S. dollars with nine films.

What accounts for this difference in audience response? According to Jeff Gomez, CEO of transmedia production company Starlight Runner Entertainment, “A primary driver for the success of shared universes is master conductor, a producer who understands how to unfold a massive narrative through smaller, self-contained stories. While this conductor offers some creative freedom to the filmmakers producing the individual stories, the conductor enforces the universe’s narrative integrity and ultimately directs how the tales move toward periodic climactic events that tie them all together.”

According to Gomez, who has worked with Disney, 20th Century Fox, and other studios, many companies still opt for a more individualized “auteur” approach, resulting in shared universes with disjointed overall narratives, various inconsistencies in characterization and the “rules” of the story world, and a lack of overall narrative momentum. These can yield colossal hits, like Warner Bros. The Dark Knight or 20th Century Fox’s Deadpool, but also in box office failures such as WB’s Birds of Prey and Fox’s Dark Phoenix.

Let’s take a closer look at how the MCU built its grand narrative over the last decade—and how studios can benefit from these factors when creating, revising or sustaining a multi-movie or transmedia entertainment franchise.

How Marvel Comics Pulled Ahead of DC Comics in the 1960s

Photo of Marvel Legend Stan Lee
Stan Lee’s approach to shared universe comic book storytelling allowed Marvel Comics to outsell DC Comics in the 1960s, creating the foundation for the MCU.

In terms of intellectual property, both Marvel and DC boast some of the most well-known characters and stories in entertainment history. DC owns both Superman, the original modern superhero, and Batman, whose long list of media adaptations makes him a very marketable character. Yet somehow, Marvel is still able to take its most obscure superheroes—such as the Guardians of the Galaxy—and turn them into billion-dollar film series.

The key, Gomez states, lies not in how valuable these properties are individually, but how well they’re used in tandem with each other.

This was actually established decades earlier in the comic book industry long before the MCU was a reality. During the 1950s and early ‘60s, DC Comics dominated the comic book market and consistently outsold Marvel (then called “Atlas”). Notably, DC was using a type of shared universe at this point by having Superman, Batman, and other characters guest star in one another’s comics. However, continuity was loose and events in certain plotlines were not always referenced or acknowledged in other books.

In 1961, however, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby launched The Fantastic Four and began laying the groundwork for a more coherent shared universe where major events, from the wedding of the series’ main heroes to the coming of the planet-destroying demigod Galactus, were referenced and affected the plotlines of other Marvel comic book series. As Lee was the main writer for most the titles, maintaining continuity was more feasible.

“But what was especially interesting in Stan Lee’s case, was that he wanted to do this,” says Gomez. “By creating a tighter continuity between the titles, as well as taking a deeper and more human approach to characterization, Lee appealed to a slightly more mature sensibility in his readers. He created a more realistic shared universe, one that started to unfold like a giant narrative tapestry. As his audience aged, they were noticing these subtleties in the comics and stayed with them longer.”

Readers responded positively, and according to Marvel’s house ad for retailers in the 1960s, Marvel sales consistently rose, allowing their books to sell 18,700,000 copies in 1961 and 27,709,000 copies by 1964 after heroes like Spider-Man, Iron Man, and Daredevil made their debuts. By 1967, Marvel sales overtook DC sales. Eventually, DC copied Marvel’s formula for their own books but couldn’t keep up with Marvel’s success.

Marvel’s winning formula lay in the fact that each creative team worked on an individual title, yet guided their characters’ lives in a direction determined by an editorial team with a clear vision for what major events would shape the greater universe. Those events might be the Secret Wars, where multiple characters were abducted to fight on an alien planet, or the Infinity Gauntlet Saga, where the villain Thanos became a god-like being and erased half the universe’s population.

Regardless, the fallout from the big events often affected how creators shaped their smaller stories, as they showed how the heroes dealt with the changes these catastrophes made in their lives. Spider-Man gained an alien costume during his Secret Wars adventures that influenced his day-to-day crimefighting and later created his enemy Venom. Superheroes on Earth had to deal with earthquakes and disasters Thanos’ actions were causing from across the universe.

“This created the sense of shared reality that kept comic book readers invested in the books,” says Gomez. “Many fans would buy multiple titles just so they could see how the big events were affecting the smaller stories, which boosted the sales of weaker series. They’d speculate with other fans on how these events would affect the comic books moving forward, making consuming more Marvel content a communal experience—and a top priority.

Kevin Feige Emulated Marvel Visionaries Stan Lee and Jim Shooter

Marvel Studios Avengers Endgame Poster
Kevin Feige managed to successfully translate Marvel’s shared universe from the comic books to the big screen.

A Marvel Comics fan from youth, Kevin Feige intrinsically understood Stan Lee’s approach (and those of successors like Jim Shooter, who leveled up massive superhero cross-over events in the 1980s), and would have assuredly wanted to apply these techniques to the X-Men films during his tenure as a young producer at 20th Century Fox. But likely, studio politics and an emphasis on directorial power prevented him from doing so.

“Instead of a shared transmedia universe, what we got with Fox’s X-Men franchise was more akin to Japanese media mix,” observes Gomez. “The characterizations, storylines, the rules of the universe, even cast members shifted wildly from one movie to the next, one TV series to the next. At first fans attempted to make sense of it all, weaving theories that somehow placed the stories into some kind of continuum. But by the time we got to X-Men Origins: Wolverine, fans just threw up their hands. At Starlight Runner, we call this a fractured shared universe. The producers don’t care about the consistency of the narratives, so fans stop caring as well. As a result, you have these wide fluctuations in film quality and box office.”

Liberated from the Fox studio culture, Feige would quickly become the equivalent of a comic book editor-in-chief to guide the Marvel films, first independently and then with the Walt Disney Company after their acquisition of Marvel Entertainment.

Under Feige’s guidance, the MCU was able to tell self-contained stories that would entertain casual viewers while also using them as creative building blocks for an interconnected universe that engaged serous fans.

Thus, Phase One of the MCU introduced many of the primary superheroes in Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America: The First Avenger, and Thor before having them all team up in the crossover film The Avengers. With Phase Two, fully under the Disney banner, Feige continued developing the story arcs of these characters while also introducing other heroes in Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man who would become key players in the massive Phase Three crossover event Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, two of the most successful global blockbusters of all time.

Compare this with Warner Bros. Pictures approach to the DC Comics universe. Initially intent on parsing out the likes of Batman and Superman to top film directors for their unique takes on the characters, WB altered course when they recognized the value of the MCU’s singular vision. But the studio struggled with centralizing creative power.

Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Poster
Warner Bros’s auteur theory approach can create cinematic masterpieces like The Dark Knight, but doesn’t create the building blocks of a shared universe.

“Initially, Zack Snyder was handed the reigns over the films, but his approach was heavily derived from late-1980s graphic novels like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, these somber Teutonic deconstructions of the characters that signified the end of the Bronze Age of comics and started the grim and gritty trend,” says Gomez. “There’s a hardcore fan base for those kinds of films, and there was an aesthetic precedent because of the studio’s success with the Dark Knight films, but the darkness of those themes and tones are not really for kids or older adults. They don’t serve well as the basis for a four-quadrant global franchise that also generates hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing and merchandising.”

Behind the scenes, Warner Bros. Pictures was also running through a carousel of executives overseeing the DCEU. As opposed to Disney, which had reorganized its franchise management to grant individuals extraordinary creative influence, WB maintained a complex bureaucracy that divided power over the DC films between executives who answered to different superiors. In 2017, after the box office failure of Justice League, DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson said, “Our intention, certainly, moving forward is using the continuity to help make sure nothing is diverging in a way that doesn’t make sense, but there’s no insistence upon an overall storyline or interconnectivity in that universe. Moving forward, you’ll see the DC movie universe being a universe, but one that comes from the heart of the filmmaker who’s creating them.”

DC Justice League Movie Poster
The box office failure of Justice League shows the problems that can arise when individual films aren’t unified under a single vision receptive to fan desires and sensibilities.

Nelson resigned the following year, and franchise execs Geoff Johns, Jon Berg, and Greg Silverman have all since departed. Walter Hamada, current president of DC Films, has stated that the DC live action films will now be part of a cinematic multiverse—arguably more complex than a single shared universe—where characters will exist in separate cinematic worlds but also have the option of crossing over into other movie universes. This means that Robert Pattinson will star as his own version of Batman in the upcoming The Batman while two other Batmen, portrayed by Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton, will cross over into a different cinematic universe for 2022’s The Flash.

Such a strategy shows that Warner Bros. is still interested in competing with Disney-Marvel by establishing multiple cinematic universes, each with its own continuity. However, without a master conductor organizing the direction of all the disparate story worlds, the studio runs the risk of confusing audiences and further reducing their engagement with the characters.

The Shared Universe Secret Sauce: Systemic Narrative Design (and Charm)

Thor Ragnarok Poster
Thor: Ragnarök showed how directors and actors can take creative risks with shared universe films while still moving the master narrative forward.

Back on the Disney side, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was not without its challenges. Foundational agreements and corporate structure held Kevin Feige at a distance when it came to the network television and streaming. Disconnected from the movies, often suffering from limited budgets and slow pacing, shows like Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (ABC-TV), Iron Fist (Netflix) and Runaways (Hulu) could not gain a foothold on their platforms and faltered.

“The shows were undercut by political conflicts within Marvel, but more so by essential incongruities,” says Gomez. “Nearly all of them strayed much further from the source material than the movies did. The Netflix heroes avoided using their powers or wearing costumes, as if the producers were ashamed of the genre. Characters like Iron Fist or the Inhumans were nearly unrecognizable from the comics, and to boot, they weren’t particularly likeable.”

Small wonder when Feige reached the apex of Phase Three, he leveraged his success to take creative control over all of Marvel to realize his ultimate fanboy dream: to wipe the streaming and network slate clean and produce a complete and entirely cohesive transmedia Marvel Cinematic Universe.

With the emphasis Warner Bros. now places on its directors’ individual visions, one might suspect that storytellers building a shared universe may need to abandon their own individuality to follow the producer’s vision. However, following a Feige’s vision for the MCU did not mean sacrificing all of a visionary filmmaker’s creativity. In fact, even when a film did not succeed with all audiences due to creative choices, it can still hold great value for what if offers to the larger narrative.

MCU’s Thor films are a good example of this. Thor: The Dark World is considered one of the weaker entries in the MCU franchise. Critics have cited a lack of chemistry between Thor and his romantic lead Jane Foster as well as a forgettable villain as reasons for why the film did not appeal to many audiences.

Thor The Dark World Poster
MCU’s shared universe allowed a lackluster film like Thor: The Dark World to be a critical creative building block in its master narrative, motivating fans to make it an essential part of their movie watching experience.

However, Gomez points out that Thor: The Dark World introduced a good deal of lore into the franchise, including an array of “Easter eggs,” elements that seemed like background content but would become important in later films, such as the Reality Stone, one of the key Infinity Stones necessary to the greater MCU narrative. The Avengers had to literally travel back in time to the events of this movie in Avengers: Endgame to retrieve the stone, strengthening the film’s importance. As a result, fans were incentivized to watch and re-watch this film on streaming services as it has become a necessary entry in the overall story.

“There will never be a reason to go back and watch Birds of Prey, Suicide Squad or even Wonder Woman 1984, because they were subpar entries and they were not designed to fit into a greater narrative. They instantly become catalog content,” says Gomez. “Thor 2 may have sucked, but fans flocked back to it searching for clues about the Infinity Stones. Because of WandaVision on Disney+, fans are at it again, rushing back to the weakest film of the Avengers series, Age of Ultron, parsing every scene for clues—and finding them, because the filmmakers had the temerity and foresight to put them there.”

The third Thor film, Thor: Ragnarök, also shows how shared universe films can take creative risks without sacrificing their place in the grand narrative. Directed by Taika Waititi, the film moved Thor away from his usual mythological roots by having him fight on an alien planet against the Incredible Hulk. The film also allowed Thor actor Chris Hemsworth to showcase his comedic talents, greatly shifting the way the Thunder God was portrayed onscreen.

But Thor: Ragnarök still continued Thor’s story arc of loss and pain. Audiences saw Thor lose his father Odin as well as his entire home world of Asgard. These events were pivotal in establishing Thor’s later depressed state in Avengers: Endgame, making Thor: Ragnarök an important creative building block in the shared universe, and showing how individual and shared visions can work together successfully.

“Sure, writers, directors, actors, and all kinds of unforeseen circumstances can change things along the way, but that’s the jazz, the spontaneity of creating epic narrative. Because Feige’s team has a strong sense of the grand design, they can take advantage of brilliant ideas and shift course, and they can circumnavigate any sudden whirlpools,” says Gomez.

“A shared universe is not a series of linear narratives, it is a narrative system,” he states. “Imagine a web of narrative threads connecting each of these to several others. Imagine them moving and rotating and evolving over the course of space and time, like a nebula in space. Now imagine a number of these elements converging into a giant flashpoint—a major event, the culmination of years of storylines. That takes orchestration. That takes four-dimensional thinking. But you get Avengers out of it. You get Avengers: Endgame. Billions of dollars in global box office, licensing, and merchandising. That’s systematic shared universe design in a nutshell.”

The DC Animated Universe

Bruce Timm and Paul Dini created a successful DC shared universe with their animated series
The DC Animated Universe showed that Warner Bros. can create a successful shared universe by organizing multiple creators under a single shared vision.

Ironically, while DC’s live-action movies have struggled to establish a coherent shared universe, the best possible approach had been long established at Warner Bros. Animation. During the early 1990s, while Marvel was still trying to establish its film and TV properties, WB actually succeeded in creating a wildly popular shared universe through its animation properties by using similar strategies to the MCU.

Dubbed the DC Animated Universe, DCAU, or “Timmverse” by fans, this shared universe was helmed by producer and character designer Bruce Timm who co-created and produced many of the animated shows that made up the shared universe. These included Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, Justice League, and Justice League Unlimited.

Like the MCU, characters in the DCAU could venture into other show settings (as when Superman visited Gotham City to work with Batman) or reference plot elements from separate series (as when a Justice League plotline showed the government building a defense against superheroes in response to the actions of a mind-controlled Superman in the final episode of Superman: The Animated Series). Much like the MCU, the DCAU allowed for an ever-expanding and diverse cast of characters that delighted fans. Even today, Warner Bros’ new DC Universe Animated Original Movies follow a similar pattern that allows multiple films to share the same fictional space.

Most importantly, the fact that most of the DCAU series were co-created by Bruce Timm allowed the showrunner’s influence and narrative design sensibilities to establish a coherent continuity throughout the individual series. Together with writers like Paul Dini who wrote many episodes for multiple series, the creators built an interconnected story world with plotlines fans could follow from one series to another. Although the logistics of creating animated series are different from producing multi-million-dollar live action films, the DCAU’s success ultimately lay in creators following a shared vision.

The Mandalorian, Cobra Kai & How to Produce Successful Shared Universes

Disney Plus The Mandalorian poster
Disney’s shared universe and transmedia storytelling strategies have breathed new life into its Star Wars franchise with hit shows like The Mandalorian.

Can the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe truly be ported to other entertainment franchises? Gomez believes this is in the process of happening right now with Disney’s own Star Wars. Under Kathleen Kennedy, the post-George Lucas films were indeed driven by an auteur approach. Directors such as J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson were given a relatively free hand at shaping the canon of the Skywalker saga one film at a time.

“Kennedy’s mandate was to move fast, and her background was in placing strong visionary directors in the driver’s seat,” says Gomez. “In terms of narrative design, you can get away with that under Lucas himself, because he had a powerful sense of the essence of his creation and a kind of head canon for where it needed to go, even if he hadn’t written it all out ahead of time. This clearly wasn’t the case for the first several Disney films, and so the franchise started to falter. The seams were showing, the story was being made up as they went along, and this was quite noticeable to the fans.”

Interestingly, as opposed to Warner Bros., Disney did eventually turn to its animation wing to successfully tap the talent and design sensibilities of supervising director and executive producer Dave Filoni. Just as with Bruce Timm and the DC Animated Universe, Filoni’s had a deep understanding of Star Wars lore and an understanding of Lucas’ deeper philosophy and genre influences. But unlike Timm, Filoni was recruited to work in live-action by director Jon Favreau. Together they worked on The Mandalorian for Disney+, yielding a series that fans saw as truer to the franchise than any of the recent features.

It is said that Kevin Feige himself has been consulting for Lucasfilm in an effort to convert all of Star Wars into a cohesive transmedia universe.

“With this immense canvas, we’re going to see a reiteration of the fractal systemic design approach that Feige applied to the MCU,” says Gomez. “Clusters of streaming series set in a similar time period will introduce a number of key characters and escalating events. These will lead to a major theatrical or streaming feature that unites these characters in a climactic galaxy-shaking game-changing event. The offshoot characters and influence of this event will plant narrative seeds that will grow into their own in other series, but also in comic books, novels, video games, theme park attractions, and other content.

But the technique doesn’t require Feige’s presence, nor does it need billion-dollar slate budgets. Gomez often cites his 10 Commandments of 21st Century Franchise Production as the roadmap to follow. A combination of intrinsic understanding of the property and its lore, centralizing to one or a few visionaries, and respect for fan participation, the list was written over a decade ago, but still holds up. In fact, many of these rules are being observed by a surprising franchise upstart—Cobra Kai, currently airing on Netflix.

Cobra Kai Netflix Poster
Cobra Kai builds on the Karate Kid franchise by constructing a shared universe that allows for collective journey storytelling, turning it into the #1 streaming series in 28 countries.

A low-budget martial arts comedy-drama created by Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Scholossberg, Cobra Kai holds the first four Karate Kid feature films as canon, and explores the impact of the events of those films on the lives of their various characters, their families, and their students. But what could have been a goofy nostalgia one-off has become a worldwide streaming phenomenon.

Cobra Kai pulls off the central magic trick of shared universes by shifting out of the singular hero’s journey model of storytelling, and into Collective Journey modality,” says Gomez, referring to a more novelistic multi-perspective kind of narrative he has been observing in contemporary pop culture and social media. “The series suggests that maybe Daniel LaRusso was not purely the hero of those films, and that Johnny Lawrence was not all bad. In Cobra Kai, we have the contemporary sense that everyone has valid reasons for behaving the way they do, even as it maintains the drama of the conflicts we can have with one another. The audience loves all of the characters, but it’s fun to watch them fight!”

Per Gomez’s Commandments, the producers understand and respect the underlying philosophy of the franchise originated by creator Robert Mark Kamen, who consults on the show. A strong effort has been made to bring back actors from the original films and take them seriously as characters. Fans are convinced that there is an overall schematic to the series’ multiple seasons, leading to major turning points each year. And the visionaries have even hinted at the fact that the Miyagi-verse (as the shared universe is called) will be due for expansion into multiple series or features in years to come.

The results are remarkable: Cobra Kai has ranked as the #1 streaming series in 28 countries, its third season drawing over 41 million Netflix member households within its first month. Perhaps even more valuable (and unlike most Netflix content), the series has drawn an ardent fan base.

“The term badass has reentered the global lexicon! It’s a real meme-generator,” jokes Gomez. “But what the series and its shared universe—because everyone is going back to watch those old Karate Kid movies—has truly accomplished is that it has become resonant with the times. The Miyagi-verse tells us that there are no absolutes, and that we can transcend deeply ingrained differences. There are viable third solutions to our polarized problems. The franchise is great fun, but it’s also a valid and even artful creative expression.”

To be sure, shared universes are not the only way film franchises can succeed. Individual stand-alone movies and film series still have their place in the entertainment industry and continue to draw their own types of audiences.

But the massive profits generated by a properly executed shared transmedia universe cannot be ignored either. And with more production companies interested in taking the rich source material of comic book and dormant intellectual property narratives and adapting them to the screen, a shift in moviemaking style is becoming more essential.

Film studios and entertainment companies that want to build a shared universe need to invest in a producer capable of constructing an epic narrative told through individual stories. This producer needs to not only be familiar with the source material but also sensitive to fan sensibilities and desires. Most important, that producer needs to be able to work with other storytellers, granting them the freedom to develop the fictional landscape while moving their narratives in directions that build the master plot.

It’s a complex task, and one that even seasoned production companies are struggling to master. Yet done correctly, a shared universe creates a brand loyalty beyond what many companies can hope to achieve. Like the comic book worlds before them, shared cinematic universes that successfully mesh individual visions to serve a greater whole offer their audiences story worlds they will engage in for generations.

_________________

This is the third installment in a transmedia storytelling series being written in tandem with Jeff Gomez of Starlight Runner Entertainment, one of the industry’s foremost transmedia producers. Starlight Runner consults with multiple companies from Disney to Sony to Coca-Cola to help establish their story worlds and produces transmedia content including graphic novels, videos, books, animated series, and web sites. Learn how your company can use them to produce your own full transmedia story world through narrative design, content production, licensing, merchandising, and fan cultivation.

The Transmedia Storytelling Series:

#1: How Disney+ Uses Star Wars to Dominate Digital Entertainment

#2: Ultraman: Translating a Multi-Billion Dollar Japanese Superhero Franchise for American Media

#3: Disney Marvel vs Warner Bros. DC: How Do Shared Universes Succeed or Fail?

#4: Your Shared Universe on a Budget: What The Blair Witch Project and Video Palace Teach Indie Filmmakers 

 

Ultraman: Translating a Multi-Billion-Dollar Japanese Superhero Franchise for American Media

Ultraman Ultra Galaxy Fight

Since 1966, Japan’s Ultraman media franchise has generated billions of dollars in merchandising revenue, proving to be one of the country’s most lucrative properties. Produced by Tsuburaya Productions, the story of a race of giant “Ultras” superheroes who came to Earth to battle kaiju (giant monsters and aliens), struck a chord with Japanese audiences who eagerly consumed Ultraman TV shows, movies, toys, and comic books (manga), giving their hero the same pop culture status as America’s Superman.

The franchise’s success caught the attention of American producers who sought to adapt shows like Ultraman and Ultraseven for U.S. audiences in the early 1970s. Additional series and an animated show also saw U.S. release in the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly after the success of Westernized franchises like Power Rangers (itself adapted from Japan’s long-running Super Sentai series).

While Ultraman did develop a fandom in the U.S., simply offering English dubbed versions of the show failed to give it the same traction as other U.S. versions of Japanese series. As a result, Ultraman remained an obscure property in the US for decades.

Ultraman Brothers Guarding Japan
The original Ultra Brothers are celebrated as classic superheroes in Japan, predating Power Rangers and Kamen Rider.

Recently, however, Jeff Gomez, CEO of transmedia production company Starlight Runner Entertainment, was recruited by Danny Simon, founder of licensing company The Licensing Group, to team with Tsuburaya and bring Ultraman to America using a different marketing strategy. A lifelong fan of the Ultraman series, Gomez employed his understanding of the franchise to help emphasize its unique qualities and translate it into a form more accessible to American audiences.

Then, using both nostalgia marketing and a transmedia storytelling strategy employed with great success by Star Wars, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and other companies, The Licensing Group and Starlight Runner created a marketing plan for Ultraman to reach existing fans and new audiences through multiple platforms.

Translating Ultraman for U.S. Audiences

Marvel Comics Ultraman battling giant kaiju monster
Marvel’s Top 20 Ultraman comics boast covers from renowned artists like Jorge Molina.

As a Japanese franchise that emerged in the 1960s, Ultraman originally reflected many of Japan’s post World War II anxieties, as represented by the giant kaiju creatures that attacked its cities. The Ultras, by contrast, were symbols of Japanese progressiveness—technologically advanced beings who used their enlightened natures and powers to protect and inspire humanity.

In an interview with Den of Geek, Gomez relates how he used this understanding of what Ultraman represents to Japanese audiences in his meeting with Tsuburaya Productions to show he knew what made Ultraman such a unique property. He emphasized that, unlike other heroes, Ultraman often “provides space” for the kaiju he battles to retreat or surrender, and only destroys them as a last resort.

“And that speaks to this notion of the positivity of technology, the aspiration to courage and hope and kindness,” he states. “To be able to share those insights with Tsuburaya Productions allowed for them to realize that we were sensitive to not just Ultraman as a type of superhero, but Ultraman as a symbol that was still relevant and ought to be communicated to the rest of the world.”

To amplify this core value to an international audience, Gomez saw an opportunity to emphasize how kaiju represent modern problems such as rising authoritarianism, climate change, and disinformation, which would resonate with contemporary audiences. He also sought to retain the defining traits of Ultraman—particularly the way most Ultras shared their power with a human host, allowing an ordinary man or woman to become a giant capable of protecting humanity in moments of crisis.

Ultraman Mill Creek Classic
Mill Creek Entertainment is distributing Ultraman series from all three periods of the franchise.

On the flipside, Gomez—a member of various Ultraman fan pages—realized the 50+ years of Ultraman mythology needed to be streamlined for new fans to have jump-on points and come to understand the property. Thus, his team of pop culture experts, writers, and translators mined decades of Ultraman content for its most intriguing aspects and merged them to create a series of “mythology documents” that showed how their versions of the characters and story worlds worked with each other.

These documents can then inform partners, such as toy licensees, comic book publishers, and video game designers, who could study aspects of the mythology and develop self-contained stories that fit into the franchise’s new canon.

Given that Japanese Ultraman storytelling contains a wealth of backstories about the Ultras, their home world, and their ability to leap into different alternate universes (each with their own Ultra heroes), Starlight Runner had plenty of material to draw from, enabling them to describe a narrative multiverse that would encourage existing fans to recognize familiar aspects of the Ultraman story while also creating an epically structured narrative for new fans to explore.

Both of these aspects—nostalgia marketing and transmedia storytelling—would go on to play a huge role in mounting a North American conquest for the property.

Reactivating Existing Fans with Nostalgia Marketing

Ultraman The Licensing Group Japan
The Licensing Group has bolstered Classic Ultraman in North America with nostalgia products.

Realizing the Ultraman franchise already had a small but devoted U.S. fanbase, Starlight Runner and The Licensing Group chose to first reach out to these existing fans through nostalgia marketing. By getting these fans on their side, they realized the Ultraman fanbase would help promote the new story to a broader audience once they realized the mythology was in good hands.

“When Starlight Runner worked on Nickelodeon’s revival of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, we knew that a key to reaching kids who might not have been aware of the brand was to connect initially with their parents,” said Gomez. “We held events at big conventions like San Diego Comic Con, and invited older fan influencers to Turtle pizza parties and character and toy unveilings. The contact and dialogue worked, and we got their enthusiastic stamp of approval.

“These Turtles were drawn from the same DNA as the ones you loved as a child, even though they may look a bit different and their story is more contemporary. The message was tremendously amplified on fans sites and in news and social media, and we immediately generated a huge base of kids looking forward to the new series.”

To achieve this same response for Ultraman, a deal was made with Mill Creek Entertainment to release new Blu-ray DVD collections of many of the original Ultraman series. They scored some prime real estate at big box stores such as Wal-Mart, with signage encouraging parents to introduce their kids to the power of Ultraman. Mill Creek’s streaming service, movieSPREE also enabled DVD owners to watch the shows on any device.

More recently, Shout! Factory announced that Ultraman content will be available for streaming on demand across Shout! Factory TV platforms, on ShoutFactoryTV.com; Shout! Factory TV’s Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV, and Android apps; and on various Shout! Factory TV branded channels including Tubi, Amazon Prime Channels, and the Roku Channel. As with Mill Creek, many of these series were made available in the US for the first time, generating significant enthusiasm for the franchise among older fans and reactivating the Ultraman fan communities on Facebook, Reddit, and Discord.

In toys and merchandise, Classic Ultraman products have been on a fairly regular release schedule from companies such licensees as Mezco Toyz, Mego, Yesterday’s and Fansets. Executives from nearly all of these firms cite themselves as fans of the original Ultraman characters, and targeting them was a key strategy of Danny Simon and The Licensing Group.

But Ultraman is not Betty Boop, Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe. He is poised for a true comeback and nostalgia has only been phase one of a unique overall strategy.

Engaging the Fanbase with Transmedia Storytelling

Ultraman Netflix Original Anime Series Poster
Netflix brings Ultraman into the 21st Century with a hugely popular computer-animated series.

While the original Ultraman series gained popularity primarily on TV, today’s audiences learn about franchises through more varied channels, including digital series, video games, comic books, and social media.

Thus, Starlight Runner supervised the production of multiple entry points into the new Ultraman multiverse, using a digital marketing technique known as transmedia storytelling. By telling individual, self-contained stories through multiple platforms that formed a massive sprawling universe, Ultraman was able to reach and engage with thousands of new fans, building a vast US audience.

A key entry point for fans old and new has been the Netflix Anime ULTRAMAN series. Based on a popular recent Japanese manga, the series surpassed such popular shows as One Punch Man and Neon Genesis Evangelion to become the most watched anime on Netflix in 2019. A second season is in production.

But a key factor in terms of entertainment industry perceptions of Ultraman lay in Simon and Gomez’s efforts to get Marvel Comics to acquire the license. Gomez knew that Marvel Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski was a Japanese pop culture enthusiast with more than a passing familiarity with the character. Eager to acquire licensed properties that had international interest, the Ultraman deal was a no-brainer for Cebulski, and Marvel’s The Rise of Ultraman miniseries has been a late 2020 hit.

Marvel Comics Ultraman with Spider-Man
Marvel gave Ultraman a boost by teaming him with Spider-Man in this alternate cover promo for The Rise of Ultraman.

A sequel series, The Trials of Ultraman (scheduled for Spring 2021 release), was recently announced. Filled with Easter eggs and homages to Classic Ultraman, the books are said to be set in a canonical dimension of the Ultraman universe, and has been the subject of fan videos, including a series produced by Starlight Runner. Both new and longtime fans are expressing enthusiasm for the books and are sharing their love across social media.

On the interactive front, fans can even catch Ultraman in the Override 2: Super Mech League Ultraman Deluxe Edition video game which features multiple characters from the franchise—Ultraman, Bemular, Dan Moroboshi, and Black King.

“Audiences are more fragmented than ever, and respond best to content on their preferred platform,” observes Gomez. “Gamers, anime fans, comics fans, they find your story world in their space, and then might be drawn to its other iterations in different media. This is one of the primary benefits of transmedia storytelling. Sure, Anime ULTRAMAN on Netflix has been the strongest driver of North American fans simply because it’s on the biggest platform—but it’s the ubiquity of the property, and its affiliation with strong partners like Marvel that raise the value of the property in the eyes of the entertainment and consumer product spaces. Our partners are helping us tell Ultraman’s story, so costs are actually relatively modest, and all of this is helping the franchise gain momentum.”

Ultraman also now has an official YouTube channel that showcases dubbed and subtitled episodes of the franchise’s Japanese programs, as well as the Ultraman Galaxy website that helps inform new fans about the new Ultraman mythology. The Ultraman Z, series, which just finished its run on YouTube, was dubbed one of The Best TV Shows of 2020 by Nerdist, with a single spectacular nighttime kaiju battle earning its own article on Gizmodo’s io9.

Tsuburaya Productions shows no sign of slowing with Ultraman in 2021. With the franchise set to reach its 55th anniversary in Japan, fans can look forward to an upcoming Shin Ultraman feature film, by celebrated director Shinji Higuchi, to make its way to the States. More English subtitled and dubbed original content is being prepared directly for the YouTube channel, such as the latest installment of the Ultra Galaxy Fight series, dubbed The Absolute Conspiracy.

“What’s really special about Ultra Galaxy Fight is that the series pulls Ultraman characters from across the story world, from the Classic to the New Generation Heroes characters,” said Gomez. “The stories are major universe-wide, multi-dimensional epics that are serving to drive the franchise forward both in terms of innovative and highly accessible format, and as an enthralling, action-packed saga.”

Indeed, all of this diverse content ties together into a greater tapestry, one that is almost certain to lead to realizing Tsuburaya Productions’ goal of having a major Ultraman motion picture produced on this side of the Pacific.

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This is the second installment in a transmedia storytelling series being written in tandem with Jeff Gomez of Starlight Runner Entertainment, one of the industry’s foremost transmedia producers. Starlight Runner consults with multiple companies from Disney to Sony to Coca-Cola to help establish their story worlds and produces transmedia content including graphic novels, videos, books, animated series, and web sites. Learn how your company can use them to produce your own full transmedia story world through narrative design, content production, licensing, merchandising, and fan cultivation. And be sure to follow this blog to receive additional articles in this series directly to your email.

The Transmedia Storytelling Series:

#1: How Disney+ Uses Star Wars to Dominate Digital Entertainment

#2: Ultraman: Translating a Multi-Billion Dollar Japanese Superhero Franchise for American Media

#3: Disney Marvel vs Warner Bros. DC: How Do Shared Universes Succeed or Fail?

#4: Your Shared Universe on a Budget: What The Blair Witch Project and Video Palace Teach Indie Filmmakers