Shibuya NFT Creates Web3 Native Film Platform

Hollywood has long been looking for new ways to fund and market films. With the emergence of NFTs and web3, filmmakers and film producers have actively been searching for ways to harness the exponential fund-raising potential that the space has demonstrated. As out-of-nowhere, original IP like Bored Apes have vaulted into the spotlight, Hollywood has been left on the outside looking for where they can plug in their IP.

Yes, we have seen traditional IP money printing NFT launches around the typical tentpoles. Marvel and Star Wars minting one off collections for a limited number of fans. But these moves are a flash in the pan. Web3 has moved on from the quick flip, cash grab days, into having a large concentration of smart and creative people looking how to build out meaningful ecosystems within the space. With web3 native creative projects, it seems like eventually, the next Star Wars or the next Harry Potter could be spun out of passionate creative team delivering surprising characters and worlds to an adoring and high-spending audience that funds higher production ways to bring those creations into the world.

The latest web3 film attempt to step onto the stage is the Shibuya project by crypto-creators @pplpleasr1 and @maciej_kuciara. What they have brought to the table is a stylish website and the opening moments of an original animation that hearkens to the style of Japanese anime powerhouse Studio Ghibli. The website features a stunning and modern version of Tokyo's central hub, Shibuya, rendered in a metaverse friendly style that has all sorts of future leaning implications. The film, is an Alice and Wonderland style animation, which ends with a cliffhanger of Alice standing in front of two doors, left and right.

As you get into the project details, you see that you can mint a "Producer Pass" which acts as a governance token to the project's DAO. With the NFT, you can vote for which door Alice should open. It's like the interactive films that Netflix has been playing around with, only in this case, you vote with buying into the ecosystem. Once the votes have been cast, it will unlock Chapter 2 in the story, upon which a new round of Producer Passes will be minted and the process of deciding the main character's fate will be in the hands of the community again.

The project also has "White Rabbit Tokens" that will be generated based on how early users join the project. The earlier you get in, the more tokens you will accumulate. At the end of the film, the film itself will be fractionalized into an NFT, and all participants will be able to stake an ownership in the final film.

Hopping into the Discord and AMAs you find that there are plans of this being the first film in a web3 film platform, where original stories will be created, and then delivered "direct-to-community." It's like Netflix meets Patreon or other crowdfunding analogies from the web2 era.

Again, reverse engineer your favorite franchise, and you can start to see how a launchpad for characters and stories could escalate. Luke Skywalker could have been introduced this way. George Lucas could have presented the opening atmosphere of Star Wars and allowed fans to buy into it from the get go. Imagine owning an NFT minted in 1977 that represented a share of ownership in the character Darth Vader. The future is impossible to predict, but creative minds are actively looking how to scale their original stories and turbocharge their development and funding via the power of web3.

It's also possible that eventually Hollywood will see the profit potential in fans wanting to have some skin in the game of the franchises they love. What if instead of having an Ironman lunchbox, you could own a part of Ironman, and participate in the success and profits of the character moving forward. Suddenly we aren't talking about fleeting animal illustrations. We are talking about cultural forces opening up and rewarding fans' for their passion and promotion. Think of the money big studios could cut from their marketing budgets, if they just allowed an energized and invested audience to preach the good word and hype up the latest release. We are several steps from this point, but all signs and ingenuity are pointing this way.

Until then, check out the Shibuya project and see if the community will send Alice through the door on the left or right.