The movie industry is one that has lasted for more than 100 years. It has delighted generations, thrived through recessions, and evolved in the decades that it has been around. The business has also helped other industries, especially in the days of the blockbusters where properties have gone much further than the cinema screen.
The merchandising industry can actually be traced back nearly one-hundred years itself, back to the days of one of Disney’s very first cartoons, Steamboat Willie, the debut of a mouse that we would come to know very well over the following decades. Back in 1929, the Walt Disney company was apparently offered money for Mickey Mouse on writing tablets, and while the practice of merchandising movie and television properties dropped off until the 1970s, it has never been bigger than what it is today.
One such industry that has benefitted from using movie and TV licenses on their products is in the gaming industry, and in particular, slot machines. In recent years, with the rise of the online machine, the gaming industry is booming and is now worth around £5 billion per year in the UK alone. Slot machines, particularly the online slot make up a huge chunk of that. Film and TV titles have helped draw in players from all over the world, both in the casinos and in the online playing rooms; they are, quite simply, making the slots hugely popular all over again. If you look at comedy film themed slot games alone, there are titles like recent releases Ted and Bridesmaids, as well as the classics like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and even that classic 1990s spoof The Naked Gun.
Across the other genres, you’ll find the likes of Scarface and Rocky amongst the classics, as well as Game Of Thrones in the television section with entertainment companies all over the world signing over the use of their properties for online slot machines.
So why are they so popular? Well, if you take Game of Thrones as an example, the series recently ended after a hugely popular 73 episodes over 8 series. The last season alone, while hugely controversial, brought in a massive 14 million viewers per week at its peak and is, and will remain as being one of the most popular TV series of all time. The show was a talking point every week, the controversial nature of its content one that raised debate with fans both in the online communities and no doubt the workplace the following morning after airing for the first time. Anything branded with the Game Of Thrones logo is sure to bring with it attraction, and it’s not just the gaming industry that caught on. Game Of Thrones, as an example, can be seen on licensed products including t-shirts, mobile phone games, bubblehead dolls, cups, replica weaponry, and much more. There is also reportedly a $30,000 resin replica of the Iron Throne.
Movies led the way, of course, the 1977 debut of a little-known film called Star Wars is one of the first big movies to capitalise on spin-off merchandising. That continues to this day with film franchises like Jurassic World, Transformers, the new Star Wars movies, and the Marvel films all also having their own merchandise, some of which sometimes takes in more cash than the films themselves.
Movies and now TV will always be pushing their products onto different platforms. They might have helped revive the slot machine industry, but what will be next? As the event movie becomes bigger and budgets higher, we can only dream of what we can expect to see in the future.
