Hollywood actor Dr. Wesley Snipes is tokenizing a $25 million movie fund along with Liechtenstein Cryptoassets Exchange (LCX). This will be a fully compliant security token offering (STO) with the intention of tokenizing the funds for future investment in movies and television shows produced by Snipes’ studio, Maandi House.
Dr. Snipes is a well-known American actor who is also an accomplished producer and martial artist. The fund will be named the “Daywalker Movie Fund” (DMF) after his most famous franchise, the Blade trilogy. Snipes’ other work includes Major League, Demolition Man, and New Jack City.
The implications of this move are pretty broad for the entertainment industry. Ideally, this will enable retail investors to invest in entertainment projects that were normally only accessible to Hollywood producers. DMF tokens will participate in profit-sharing for all projects by the studio, as well as offering exclusive benefits like invites to premieres.
Crypto and the Entertainment Industry
Snipes isn’t the first celebrity to see the potential that tokenizing assets can have on the entertainment industry. Johnny Depp has previously invested in a platform that centers around social entertainment using crypto. More instances of this will come as actors realize that this helps them as well.
Crowdfunding has been present in the movie industry in several forms for a while. And entertainment has become increasingly democratized as costs of production go down. The amateur filmmaker is able to make a better product every year, even with their limited resources.
Netflix was a step in the right direction by taking a lot of the power out of the hands of all the big studios, but it is a tech giant in itself. Now, with this recent development, big budget movies will be able to be financed by retail investors.
Normally only available to high net worth individuals making larger private investments, the entertainment industry is effectively open to any investments with the Daywalker Movie Fund. Making all investments more accessible to the little guy is a large part of the thesis behind Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general.
Shifting Power Structures
Hollywood, much like the banking world, is very closed off and concentrated in its power. So as we start seeing banking become decentralized, it is only natural that other industries like education and entertainment go through the same process. Just like buying Bitcoin is a way to support change in the financial system, buying DWF tokens works that way for the entertainment complex. Until now, it has been a very closed off part of society, with very few people having control over the way it is run and the movies which are made. The #MeToo movement was the beginning of the shift, and now cryptocurrency has the potential to be the means.
A more outlandish idea here is that with entertainment becoming controlled more by the people, will we see more fan-requested reboots like Veronica Mars or Lucifer? These are instances where a show went off the air and such an uproar was made by the fans of the show, that it was deemed profitable to bring it back. And not to drag up an old topic, but would it be possible to remake the final season of Game of Thrones using this model?