Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Sequelitis

The financial press, it thinks Frozen 2 is a dead-bang certainty. (Why would anybody come to that conclusion?).



The hit movie "Frozen" has yet to receive an official sequel order. Disney (NYSE:DIS) signed a new licensing deal this week that will extend the power and revenue of the franchise and could be major foreshadowing step to an extension of the franchise.



Hasbro gained the rights to make dolls based on the "Frozen" movie beginning in the year 2016. Prior to this deal, Mattel had the rights and is the obvious loser here. The deal comes less than a week after highlighting Jakks Pacific as a winner this holiday season with its highly anticipated Snow Glow Elsa doll and Olaf Sno Cone Maker. Investors sold off Jakks on the Hasbro news, but Jakks does not lose anything in the deal.



Not to take away from the deal or cause speculation, I have to believe that this is foreshadowing for an official sequel notice coming soon. ...


No conglomerate worth its buy-backs creates a hugely profitable product and then walks away from it. Not in 2014.



Did Fox-News Corp. walk away from Ice Age? Did Pixar walk away from Toy Story? Did DreamWorks ANimation abandon Shrek? Sure, Walt Disney never followed up with a sequel to Snow White, but 1937, that was a different freaking universe. Studios weren't geared toward sequels. They were geared to "Let's make another Clark Gable/James Cagney/Tyrone Power movie very much like the last Clark Gable/James Cagney/Tyrone Power movie."



Sequels just didn't enter into the equation.



But they do now. We're living in the first half of the twenty-first century. Not the first half of the twentieth.



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