Industry-standard NFT Distribution Channel; Interview With Ryan Matthews, CEO of movienftz
movienftz is a web 3.0 project that enables production companies, particularly independent ones, to exclusively license their movie posters as NFTs, providing audiences with an innovative way to own, trade, and engage with cinema. movienftz aims to create an industry-standard NFT distribution channel that provides meaningful ownership, as well as valuable beyond-the-movie experiences through utility. See more details about the project in this TechBullion interview with Ryan Matthews, CEO of movienftz.
Please tell us your name and some more about yourself?
By way of introduction, my name is Ryan Matthews and I’m the founder and CEO of movienftz. My previous experience has been both in TV/movie production between Canada and New Zealand before now developing ways the industry can take advantage of tomorrow’s tools to do today’s jobs. Holistically, there’s been several very notable times of change in the industry due to technological developments e.g black and white to color, silent to talkie, film to digital. Yet now what we are seeing with many new technologies such as virtual production, new forms of distribution through blockchain tech, etc. we now have a plethora of more effective ways to do things to solve many problems in what can be a very difficult industry.
What is movienftz and what unique solutions are you providing?
With movienftz, we function to enable production companies and distributors to exclusively license their movie posters as NFTs, to provide audiences with an innovative way to own, trade, and engage with cinema. Our focus here with movienftz is to create an industry-standard poster NFT distribution channel that provides meaningful ownership as well as valuable beyond-the-movie experiences through utility. I believe there is great potential in harnessing blockchain tech to provide audiences with more than viewership through ownership because the experience shouldn’t end at the credit roll.
Could you describe the market demand for posters as well as the technology behind NFTs?
The technology (and psychology) behind NFTs is simple; as we consume more and more digitally, people want to show proof of ownership, and blockchain tech allows this by corroborating who owns what. NFTs, which are on chain, are a way of reflecting your interest and your personality, digitally. With movienftz, we are providing movie fans with the opportunity to own the poster as a form of communication to elaborate on their interests. Posters are themselves much more than ‘advertisements used to sell products’, they are pieces of art that audiences have and always will collect. Existing already is an established demand for posters, some of the physical relics are very valuable; a Taxi Driver poster sold through Sotheby’s recently for over $3,000 — imagine if that was of a fixed limited supply, wouldn’t fade over time and included a section of the movie’s soundtrack through being an NFT MP4.
What is the legal arrangement of your licensing agreement and what are the factors of your decisions?
We look to gain the exclusive license over the poster for NFT purposes only, in perpetuity. Which in layman’s terms means the licensor would own commercial rights to the poster except for in the instance of NFTs. In such licensing arrangement, the poster we sell is the only instance that the poster will appear on any NFT marketplace. This is important because otherwise, this would compromise the non-fungible nature of the NFTs. In terms of decision making, we take into consideration both the poster itself and also the movie it represents — there’s a lot of study that goes into our decision, is the poster lurid/exciting/iconic? how well will the movie perform? is there a pre-established fandom around the movie through a franchise? and most importantly is the poster one that audiences will want to collect? Certainly not every movie poster needs to be an NFT — hence we have to be very careful about what we choose and also about how this is released in terms of price and supply. In the future, we plan to set up a feedback system that allows our community to vote on what posters they want, to aid what posters we look to offer.
Your first poster collection is from the movie Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City (2021), please tell us more about this movie and the franchise of Resident Evil?
We are more than excited about the release of the Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City poster NFTs licensed by Constantin Film and Constantin Music which will be an MP4 featuring 30 seconds from said movie’s opening soundtrack— to date, the Resident Evil movie series is the most live-action movie adaptations of a video game and at various points throughout the 2010s, the highest-grossing zombie movie series, and the highest-grossing horror movie series. The Resident Evil franchise which is across so many forms, most notably the games, has become so well recognized thanks to its fandom and so to provide an opportunity for the fans to own such an iconic poster is a great way to launch movienftz. We are releasing only 200 Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City poster NFTs on June 12 at 10 am PT for a price of 0.12 Ξ or ([$TBC] each, at the time of writing). The minting will be completed by movienftz making the NFTs directly for sale on https://opensea.io/collection/thatpostercollection
You’ve formed a partnership with Distribution Executive Sergeant Major Keith L. Craig could you tell us more about this?
I will gladly. It is with great pleasure that we welcome Keith as a partner of movienftz — what he has achieved in movie distribution at Disney is phenomenal; in 2019 Keith was part of the team that worked on the distribution strategy for all of the Disney titles which led to an industry domestic record of $3.7 billion (through movies such as Avengers Endgame ($858.3M), The Lion King ($543.6M), Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker ($515.2M)). Those are some really big numbers that prove Keith’s experience in distribution. There’s a lot we can learn from each other and so I’m looking forward to having Keith on our team — I know what we are going to do together here with movienftz is going to be great!
What do you expect from your DAO and when does it launch?
We will be committing 10% of movienftz profit from 1/1/2023 onwards to our DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) which is a system entirely controlled by those who were the first buyers of any of our NFTs and not influenced by us. These funds will be invested into community decided initiatives such as movie financing. It’s important to us to find ways to help other projects get to where they deserve to be — especially after we were supported by a grant from the LondonDAO which was formed from the Proof of Beauty NFTs.
What follows the Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City poster NFTs?
At the moment, we have several proposals in consideration for some really exciting posters. What I can speak on is that what we are building here is a long-term feed of posters available in a very limited supply making movienftz much different from the ‘overnight projects’ that are here today and gone tomorrow in the NFT space.
How can we invest in your company, do you have available opportunities for investors or partnerships?
We are always open to partnerships and new opportunities to collaborate, which is the main ethos behind film3 (that’s the movie industry in web 3). Feel free to reach out to me personally at [email protected] with any suggestions be it an interest in partnership / investing / licensing or overall feedback.
Do you have more information for our readers today?
Be there for the movienftz launch with the release of 200 Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021) poster NFTs licensed by Constantin Film and Constantin Music on 6/12 at 10 am PT for a price of 0.12 Ξ each at https://opensea.io/collection/thatpostercollection. Beyond this, there is more to come, stay tuned. For more information see movienftz.io
