Last month, the Stanley Kubrick Film Archives and its global licensing agent Caroline Mickler announced that Surge Licensing would represent six of the director’s films for consumer products activities in North America. The movies include A Clockwork Orange, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2022, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Eyes Wide Shut, and Barry Lyndon. Categories targeted include apparel and accessories, toys and games, collectibles, gifts and novelty items, and paper goods, among others, with the first products set for a fourth quarter 2022 release.
This is just one of several licensing programs that bring the life’s work of a major film and/or TV director under the banner of a single licensing program. Deals are sometimes done on a property-by-property basis, but the emphasis of the effort overall is on the director’s body of work rather than on the individual IP. Some of the other examples include:
- Norman Lear. Act III Licensing, owned by the 100-year-old director, has long grouped his television series, many of them ground-breaking, under the Lear Classic TV Collection brand. The shows under that umbrella include All in the Family, Different Strokes, Good Times, The Facts of Life, Maude, One Day at a Time, Sanford & Son, and The Jeffersons, among others. Act III also represents third-party properties for licensing.
- Jay Ward. Jay Ward Productions made news last month when it retained WildBrain to handle the licensing of consumer products, as well as distribution of existing content and production of new entertainment, based on properties created by the late animator. The deal encompasses TV shows including Rocky & Bullwinkle, George of the Jungle, Mr. Peabody & Sherman, Dudley Do-Right, and Super Chicken.
- Hayao Miyazaki. Studio Ghibli, the entity that oversees all of the Japanese animated-film director’s business, has entered into a number of licensing deals and collaborations in North America and other global markets in recent years, both for individual and multiple properties. They range from a capsule of luxury bags with Loewe featuring My Neighbor Totoro to an assortment of Bandai Namco Collectibles products from Japan, distributed in the U.S. by Bluefin, tied to My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and Kiki’s Delivery Service. Back in 2015 Studio Ghibli paired with Diamond Comic Distributors to bring Japanese-made products, including toys and collectibles based on a variety of his films, to the U.S. and Canada for the first time. In Japan, a few recent partners—among many in that country—have included CA4LA for a headwear capsule tied to Porco Rosso, L.L. Bean for KiKi’s Delivery Service keychains and Princess Mononoke totes, and Donguri Kyowakoku for 18 glass mini plates featuring images from 14 different films.
- Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino has done a number of deals over the last couple of years featuring images of key moments from one or more of his films and TV series. Stance created socks featuring Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Reservoir Dogs, and more; Lucky Seven introduced a collection of caps tied to From Dusk Till Dawn, Kill Bill, and Pulp Fiction; Dedicated released organic cotton t-shirts, sweats, and socks for Pulp Fiction; and Wacko Maria dropped sweaters, bowling shirts, and t-shirts highlighting Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, From Dusk Till Dawn, and Death Proof. The latter included some items depicting fictional businesses seen in the productions, such as Big Kahuna Burger and Red Apple cigarettes.
- Stan Lee. Genius Brands has a joint venture with the late Lee’s POW! Entertainment called Stan Lee Universe, which controls Lee’s name, his live and animated likenesses, his signature, and the Stan Lee and Stan Lee Presents brands, as well as the properties he created after he left Marvel. The Universe includes more than 100 entertainment concepts, mostly undeveloped, among them Tomorrow Men, Black Fury, Stringbean, and Virus. Plans include licensed products as well as TV and films, comic books, and digital content. (Note that Lee is an anomaly on this list as he was not a director. But his name is closely associated with dozens of films, mostly blockbusters, based on characters he created for Marvel.)
These sorts of programs tend to be fairly limited compared to other celebrity- and entertainment-driven licensing efforts. In addition, not all directors can sustain initiatives like these. Their individual films may be licensable, but to be able to offer a portfolio of properties as a collection, they need to have a vast body of films that are recognizable as theirs, they need to hold merchandising rights for those films, and they need to have some celebrity status in their own right. The last requirement, at least, is increasingly likely, as social media and other online channels have made it possible for movie buffs to follow and learn about the directors and other creatives behind the scenes of their favorite films, and for directors to let their fans get to know a bit about them as people, above and beyond their creative output.
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