NFTs in Hollywood: Money from Nowhere – Culture

You can’t get rid of the feeling that Niels Juul would like to smirk in his pretty house in Hollywood, from which he reports via video link. Together with Jonathan Bixby, who is sitting on a bench in a London park, talking, he has found something like the dream formula for film producers. No more talking to banks. No more filing applications. No more waiting forever for money, sticking to studio bosses, letting merchandise manufacturers have a say in the script. NFT is the formula. Up to now, they were more familiar from the art world. There this abbreviation means for Non-fungible tokensthat one can acquire digital ownership of a picture without getting a physically tangible work. Already converts three-digit million sums. Yes – and now it gets a little complicated, but Jonathan can explain it right away – an NFT is not just a file that is programmed to be unique using encryption technology.

Like so many applications of blockchain technology, NFTs are a new form of contract. Above all, this is a grassroots form of economic activity in which computers join together and automate a system of trust and control. This eliminates the traditional middlemen like banks, governments and regulators, and transfers all power to the collective of users and machines. That is less than a socialist ideal the libertarian fever dream of the hyperrational Homo oeconomicuswho, in the absolute freedom of digital space, only has to answer to Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the market.

So what is a producer selling who finances a film through NFTs? It should also be said that Niels Juul is not just any indie producer. He produced Martin Scorsese’s last two films (“Silence” and “The Irishman”). With his new company NFT Studios he is currently working on Scorsese’s western epic “Killers of the Flower Moon” with Leonardo DiCaprio and on Michael Mann’s biopic “Ferrari” with Hugh Jackman. Not bad for a man who’s only been in the movie business for twelve years. Before that, the native Dane whipped up sports and fashion brands such as Cerruti, Everlast and Kangol and co-founded the premium clothing brand Von Dutch. And now he’s going to turn film funding upside down by – well what actually? “Jonathan, do you want to do this?”

Jonathan Bixby nods into his cell phone camera. Bixby is a Canadian investor and so-called serial entrepreneuras people are called who set up companies on an ongoing basis. For him, it has so far been mainly pharmaceuticals and blockchain. He finances Juuls NFT Studios with his London-based company NFT Investments. “Anyone who gets involved can become executive producers with us. That includes a few bonuses, of course. You can then maybe go to the set, meet the stars, go to a premiere, be it in LA or one of them Metaverse like Decentraland. On the other hand, you get a financial stake in the film through the NFT drop. “You mustn’t forget that with all the talk about tight budgets and the destructive powers of the Internet, film is still a business where you can multiply your money if it does then it works.

But so far it has mainly been the studios that earned money and financed their immense operating costs with it. Lateral entrants, private investors and independents rarely got anything from such licenses. “We are now opening the door to a very exclusive club,” says Juul. So if you invest $ 100 in a movie that makes four times that amount, for example, you get four hundred dollars back?

Jonathan Bixby intervenes briefly. “The crypto economy works a little differently.” He sounds as patient as a scientist explaining astrophysics to a layperson. “A crypto enthusiast wants to invest in something that is deflationary, something with a limited supply and something that is really well thought out, and I think that’s what we offer.” Whereby you can build all possible functions into such an NFT. For example, that the producers and filmmakers are involved in every resale. What the two are also conquering, however, is a completely new generation of investors. “There are a billion people who spend more than 20 hours of their free time a week in the Metaversum,” says Jonathan. “What do you think they will want? Do they want to go to a bank and stand in line and talk to a cashier? They want Bitcoin. Do you want to hang the physical art? No, but they want to join an exclusive club.”

The bottom line is that the idea of ​​democratization remains. Fans as investors

By the way, you still don’t fully understand it, because there are a lot of technical subtleties on how to make money with NFTs, which lie in the mechanics of the blockchain process, the increase in value by reducing the number of NFTs and the dynamics of crypto currencies. That’s why all the extras are tied to the NFT. Visits to the set, encounters with the stars, maybe a prop as a souvenir. The bottom line is that the idea of ​​democratization remains. Fans as investors. But now you have to play the curmudgeon a bit. Do not these investors have a say in all this democracy? And isn’t it, especially in the crypto scene with its NFTs, that is being surrendered to a world that has so far shown an astonishing degree of bad taste? If you look at the NFT art that’s making so much money, it usually is stuck in the aesthetics of video games and comics from the 1990s, with all the porn-macho-techno horrors that go with it.

Niels Juul shakes his head. “I think we’re paving a way for artists who haven’t considered this before. We’re picky about the material and we definitely want to produce quality. We work mostly as a writing and directing studio. But we are too open to the question of what people want to see. So it’s you who tell us: We want to do this, we can do that. And then we will test it with our community. And then the market will speak for itself. “

One more objection. With NFTs, don’t you make yourself dependent on the crypto-economy, which has so far seen extreme swings up and down? Clearly a question for Jonathan. “Believe me, I’m in the most speculative of all the speculative industries. And I think the answer is that investing your savings in NFT Studios is not a good idea. You have to be smart, take a portfolio approach. The So the short answer is that you can’t get rid of the speculative nature of cryptocurrencies right now. It’s speculative, period. “

In January, Niels Juul will present the first NFT-funded film at the Berlinale. It is called “A Wing and a Prayer” and tells the story of Brian Milton, who in 1998 flew around the world in a motor kite in the footsteps of Phileas Fogg from Jules Verne’s “Around the World in 80 Days”. A good start for NFT Studios, says Juul. “The film is literally set all over the world. It starts in London, then goes to Russia, China, Japan and North America. So we’re also thinking globally because most of the NFT communities are in Asia and America.”

Open detailed view

And how do you make it clear to a man like Martin Scorsese that he should get involved in NFTs in the future? Does he understand that at all, after he has spent his life on filming and otherwise obviously spends his free time sitting around in wood-paneled cocktail bars with Fran Lebowitz and enjoying themselves royally over their anti-modern tirades, which he then turns into a documentary and the Netflix series “Pretend It’s a City” has made? Niels Juul laughs and nods. “Three months ago I had no idea what it was either, and I’m sure Marty and Michael and all the great people I work with are scratching their heads and asking, what’s this about?” But it’s not just about money and new forms of investment and the enormous wealth of the crypto world. It’s also about the future.

“I have three children who taught me about their world,” says Juul. “For someone like me, it’s important to deal with the languages ​​and platforms that 20-year-olds spend their time on. And I’ll go back to Marty and all of my old friends in Hollywood and say, folks, this is it. You can speak to your audience directly, and they can be your investors. And I think that’s democratization and decentralization. So I’m very, very excited. I’m looking forward to it. Yeah! “