Sony may have thought that integrating non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as part of a movie ticket campaign was a straightforward concept, but things got a little complex when they miscalculated the growing interest in blockchain art.
That’s what Sony and AMC Theatres discovered when they opened an advanced ticket sale for Spider-Man: No Way Home yesterday. Early ticket buyers who were members of the theatre chain’s Premiere, A-List, and Investor Connect programmes received 86,000 Spider-Man NFTs as part of the campaign. The rush to acquire tickets reportedly caused AMC’s and Fandango’s websites to fail.
For Avengers: Endgame in 2019, the same early ticket rush produced some technological issues. While Spider-Man is a big property, the excitement around No Way Home suggests that there is also a significant desire to acquire what may become a valuable piece of movie memorabilia on the blockchain. Following the first ticket rush, scalpers began selling hundreds of tickets for the movie for ranging from $200 to $25,000, pricing more akin to cryptocurrency speculators than die-hard movie lovers. Only the lowest-priced tickets appear to have attracted any serious bidders so far, although several of the higher-priced bids remain available.
The NFT promotion is the first time the company has attempted to combine NFT freebies with a big movie theatre release. Customers must have their tickets scanned at a real theatre in order to obtain the NFTs, which are animated digital designs (there are 108 varieties) from animation firm Cub Studios.
Hollywood is still working out how to survive with NFTs and, in the perfect world, utilise them. Miramax, the studio behind the Pulp Fiction film, filed a lawsuit not long after filmmaker Quentin Tarantino revealed plans to sell NFTs based on the film. “Nearly all of Tarantino’s rights to Pulp Fiction” were signed away, according to the studio. The legal case also serves as a strong warning to any other film industry innovators who could be enticed by NFT fortunes to break contractual commitments relating to famous movies.
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