Super Heroes are Dead, Long Live Super Heroes
Albeit the gaming kind
Mario Brothers movie has put the superhero genre to the grave with monster box office and Sega’s purchasing of Angry Birds is the icing on the cake. Oh, by the way, there is a writers strike so normal stories to help glue new viewers to new characters will be missing.
What investors must know is that entertainment grows on you. It’s your free time. The best entertainers keep you entertained. The more time you spend with something the more familiar you are and the more you want to be captivated. That is why the youth who has no money is the long term play as they eventually will and reward those that have entertained them in their youth as they dream along with their pals about the future.
Comic books used to be 25 cents. They are now the same price as a large cappuccino at Starbucks. Watching movies is expensive if your desired one is not streaming for free. You can watch an entire gaming adventure at no cost on YouTube. Without the physical effort of going to a theatre, or going to a movie rental place and parting with your money the entire judgement factor and weighing what’s good and bad tends to create less value for that art form. The video game market has the cheap versions on your phone but you usually have to pay something to avoid all the annoying ads. And they also have the console and expensive game play as well. This game play demands your time. It also is a status symbol with your friends.
Warner Brothers will not come back to the heights Disney did with Marvel with DC movies. They had their opportunity and James Gunn isn’t going to fix it. Warner may luck out in other arenas but the super hero genre is over. A new generation of consumers have emerged and they are not going to support the past. Thankfully, because Marvel movies are not a church and no one said you are obligated to attend annually. I mean my kid is not good at these games yet he watches them on YouTube over my cajoling him to stream Disney / Marvel films. It’s over.
The new pantheon will be along the lines of:
Sonic, Mario, Lara Croft, Zelda, Kratos, Agent 44, Pikachu
Today’s stock idea is Sega…
They are going to be buying Angry Birds (a favorite of my daughter). And confirm that the new entertainment cycle is creating a game and characters that people can get involved in and then create entertaining avenues around it from merchandise to film to, I guess, amusement parks etc.
The new exciting feature for actors will be getting involved in the video gaming scene. And it’s not as odd as you may think. There is real acting in these games and reminded me of theatre, actually, and not films. Theatre has always been close to the heart of actors. And the gaming industry just might attract the better quality of actors than some that we have seen in the cinema.
We don’t like Gods in the USA and monopolies and I guess the Japanese are going to do just that with this model.
The movie theatres will ironically be healthy while Disney and Warner Brothers won’t? Quite possibly.
And go watch Tetris on Apple TV to learn more about how business and entertainment is more than what we see in La La Land.
Now, caveat. These Japanese game companies market cap are huge. But they charge a lot for their product. Our model over here is charge a little bit over time. But our Hollywood elite are marketing entertainment to individuals that do not have money and probably won’t in the future. This will be for another conversation.
So far we have been talking up:
Lion’s Gate for marketing entertainment people want to pay for.
Nintendo and Sony for their monopoly like status in the gaming industry
EPR and Cinemark - for their movie theatres, as we believe people will want to go out and have affordable fun as opposed to seeing the big celebrities performing at $1-400 a pop.
And now Sega - which is led by Sonic and family. The kids like watching and reading their adventures like I did with Disney’s Duck Tales.
At the very least, I hope this provides a different perspective on entertainment and the future.
