‘The problem with movies is that they don’t really have superfans.’ This was Marina Hyde on last week’s episode of ‘The Rest Is Entertainment’ podcast, commenting on the difference between Hollywood and HYBE, the South Korean company behind K-Pop acts like BTS.
The competency porn angle is interesting, especially as escapism from constant bad news. I've noticed this same pattern with how people engage with tutorial content lately, there's an appetite for watching someone who knows what they're doing just do it well. The microdrama trend feels like it could work for traditional studios if they stopped treating every piece of content like it needs franchise potential. Sometimes a 90 second complete story is enough.
Yeah the whole IP franchising thing can be amazingly mentally accessible if used well - fans know what something stands for and where a story is fitting in
butttt it can also be really messy when missused, you have adverts that are building on a mythology you're not aware of and building towards a film that you might not see, and the films themselves are bending backwards to include easter eggs that you won't enjoy if you haven't got the context...
aaand all of this is happening within the wider chaos of social media where people are bombarded by so many different threads of information!
Really great piece Will! Love it 🔥
Aw thanks Funmi! Was a lot of fun to write
The competency porn angle is interesting, especially as escapism from constant bad news. I've noticed this same pattern with how people engage with tutorial content lately, there's an appetite for watching someone who knows what they're doing just do it well. The microdrama trend feels like it could work for traditional studios if they stopped treating every piece of content like it needs franchise potential. Sometimes a 90 second complete story is enough.
Yeah the whole IP franchising thing can be amazingly mentally accessible if used well - fans know what something stands for and where a story is fitting in
butttt it can also be really messy when missused, you have adverts that are building on a mythology you're not aware of and building towards a film that you might not see, and the films themselves are bending backwards to include easter eggs that you won't enjoy if you haven't got the context...
aaand all of this is happening within the wider chaos of social media where people are bombarded by so many different threads of information!