TV Brand-Casting, Svod, and Ott at Comcast and Disney

Jennifer Gillan’s chapter looks at how television sitcoms have become another promotional arm by which parent companies prop up their franchises. She considers how sitcoms can play a part in what she calls ‘transmedia marketing circuits,’ looking specifically at the content-as-promotion strategies connected to Black-ish (ABC, 2014-Present) and Parks and Recreation (NBC, 2009-2015). The essay demonstrates that, with the rapid spread of subscription video on demand services that are either directly owned by or are supplied with content from the studios, television content is but one group of repurposable and reusable assets in massive, integrated platforms.

How to Animate Your Franchise: Dreamworks Animation and the Franchising of How to Train Your Dragon

Rayna Denison analyzes how and in what ways the How To Train Your Dragon franchise (2010-Present) has been developed in relation to the success or struggles of DreamWorks Animation. She argues that the franchise has developed primarily in relation to three specific factors: the evolution of its studio; attempts by its production studio to capitalize on new distributive technologies; and tensions between producers that can be read at the level of the franchise’s narrative flows.

Ghostly Boundaries: Transnational Tensions and Adapting Animation in the Ghost In The Shell Franchise

Brian Ruh’s essay analyzes the representational politics in the Japanese-originated Ghost in the Shell franchise (1989-Present). Media franchises continue to struggle with representation, both in front of the camera (e.g., the marginalization of LGBTQ characters in franchise films) and behind it (e.g., a lack of female directors on franchise projects). As Ruh explains, Rupert Sanders’s 2017 American, live-action Ghost in the Shell adaptation sparked a controversy in representation after casting Scarlett Johansson in the lead role of Motoko Kusanagi.

“Now They’re Playing with Power!”: Nintendo’s Classics and Franchise Legacy Management

Matthew Thomas Payne’s chapter considers the role of franchise management through video games. He uses the case study of Nintendo’s NES and SNES micro-consoles. His essay posits that franchises can refer to both software and hardware, as the built-in games on Nintendo’s mini-consoles function as a form of franchise management and corporate canonizing by privileging certain video game texts over others.

Evil Spawn or Good Business? New Line Cinema, Critters, and Film Franchising at the Margins

Daniel Herbert presents a historical examination of New Line Cinema’s Critters (1986-Present) franchise. The essay looks at the role that home video early on played in the development of media franchises and also explains the centrality of Critters and other franchises to the development of New Line itself. The essay provides an example of franchise management from the industry’s margins.

The (Im)Perfect Organism: Dissecting the Alien Media Franchise

This essay works toward a definition of the media franchise and uses the Alien franchise (1979-Present) to consider how digital technologies have influenced a shift in franchise management from multimedia to transmedia. The Alien franchise illustrates how the transition from multimedia to transmedia has brought new demands, such as stricter continuity among texts, stronger collaboration between licensors and licensees, and regular engagement with fans. The authors argue that Hollywood’s turn from multimedia replication to transmedia expansion has led to conflicts of textual continuity, creative ownership, and public relations within the Alien franchise. The chapter dissects these conflicts through the video game Aliens: Colonial Marines (Sega, 2013) as a case study of media franchise mismanagement.

Hollywood’s VR Vision: New Frontier or Virtually the Same Thing?1

James Fleury examines virtual reality in relation to Hollywood promotional strategies. As his essay explains, the virtual format may be struggling to gain mainstream adoption, but media companies continue to use it in service of their existing film, television, and video game franchises. Overall, he argues that this promotional emphasis reflects the tendency for the American film and television industry to enter emerging formats through low-risk experiments in the form of promotional content before making a larger-scale push with original material.

Network Streaming: TV Broadcasters in the Digital Space

Monica Sandler focuses on subscription video on demand services, using the case study of Comcast NBCUniversal’s failed SeeSo platform. Her essay examines how television networks themselves can cultivate a franchise identity for themselves by expanding their brand into emerging formats. The essay questions how old media incumbents like NBC can compete against big data-based entertainment companies like Netflix and Amazon.

The Happiest Plays On Earth: Theme Park Franchising in Disneyland Video Games

Heather Lea Birdsall explores the Disney theme parks as a branded franchise space through a number of its video game appearances, including Kinect Disneyland Adventures (Microsoft Studios, 2011) and its 2017 re-release Disneyland Adventures. Her essay makes clear that franchise management unites multiple physical and digital spaces in its strategic global expansion. She argues that tracing the history of Disney park-based games and apps, and considering other ways that the parks have been ‘gamified,’ reveals an ever-deepening trend of using digital game modalities to expand the Disney parks beyond their physical limitations as a means by which to establish and further them as a super-media franchise.

Introduction: The Franchise Era

The introduction chapter provides an overview of the key elements of media franchises in the context of ongoing digital technology developments. In particular, the chapter explains the history of media franchising and how technologies like video games and streaming video have encouraged a shift from multimedia to transmedia franchise management. A summary of significant shifts in contemporary media franchising follows, including a lack of mid-budget projects in favor of blockbusters, the replacement of stars with characters, experiments with cinematic universes instead of just one-off “tentpoles,” the role of television within franchise management, the pursuit of global audiences, and the entrance of Silicon Valley technology companies into Hollywood. The chapter concludes with a summary of the main ideas of each essay within the edited collection.