Intellectual Property vs Inspiration

A little book hit the shelves recently, called Fifty Shades of Grey.  The racy trilogy by Australian author E L James has spent nine weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List for combined eBook and print fiction.  The sequential two books have been steadfastly trailing along in second and third.  Prior to its success as a print book, readers had already been clamoring to read the series in eBook format, downloading it hundreds of thousands of times.

Since then, James received six-figure advances for US print publishing rights, UK and Commonwealth, as well as film rights.

What may not be immediately apparent is that Fifty Shades of Grey began as a piece of Twilight fanfiction.  E L James took Stephenie Meyer’s characters of Bella and Edward and reimagined them in an alternate universe for the basis of Fifty Shade of Grey.  So the question becomes, as Jason Boog states for NPR:

“Does the book owe more than just character names to Twilight? Even though the names and relationships have changed, Fifty Shades of Grey reproduced the mad thrill of reading Twilight, the moody relationship at its core and the endless emotional analysis.”

Boog further speculates that this may be a trend that publishers are going to have to tread lightly around as they hope to also capitalize on the series’ popularity.  But the larger implication is on authors’ intellectual property.  Authors are a divided camp when it comes to fanfiction of their works.  Some openly support it, such as Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman, and JK Rowling.  Others are staunchly against seeing their characters and environments used by others, most notably Anne Rice and George R.R. Martin, whose arguments against focus on legal copyright and intellectual property.

Writers of fanfic generally are under no disillusion that they’re using someone else’s creations, often including on sites such as fanfiction.net disclaimers that they don’t own the original source or characters within.  James’ story created a new environment for the Twilight protagonists, set in modern day Seattle, also changing the relationship between the two and molding it into a different story.  Others writers have used fanfiction as a launching pad, such as YA author Cassandra Clare, who cut her chops writing Harry Potter fanfic.  Her popular fanfic was not adapted for mainstream publishing; she instead wrote a new original series.

The issue with Fifty Shades of Grey is that at its heart, it and its characters were inspired by Stephenie Meyer’s works, begging the question of where to draw the line between copyright infringement and an inspired homage.  Is Fifty Shades of Grey a derivative of Twilight or can it be seen as an original work?  It is, admittedly, a rather grey area that can’t be answered simply.

Vintage Books included a disclaimer acknowledging the book’s fanfiction origins, and the original fanfic has been removed.  As self-publishing continues to rise in popularity there’s a likelihood that more works based on fanfiction or existing IPs will crop up, and the definition between derivation and influence may need to become more black and white.

Reaching Across the Platform: Transmedia Partnerships

We consume entertainment across more platforms than ever before.  We want to read the book and watch the movie; play the video game as well as download the mobile app.

Take for example George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, whose adored books have recently spawned a new series by HBO, PC game A Game of Thrones: Genesis (from TriplePoint client Focus Home Interactive), board-, card-, and role-playing games.

It doesn’t matter if we’ve completed the 80-hour video game plus all the side quests or read the seven-novel series in addition to the subsidiary works; we’re still compelled to watch the movie or TV show when it comes out.  But what no one wants is to walk into a film adaptation of a beloved game, comic, or book and leaving thinking, “the original was better.”

Content creators and publishers are realizing that there is enormous potential in reaching audiences across multiple platforms to maximize their brand.  The key, however, is to avoid the above, and to not offer a poor quality port from one medium to another just for the sake of it.  The ideal transmedia strategy would result in what THQ’s director of Creative and Business Development, Lenny Brown, calls the Holy Grail: “a book that sells well, with us ultimately investing $35 million in a triple-A console game backed by a $12 million marketing campaign that draws a commitment from Hollywood for a movie or television event” for a single intellectual property (IP).

And THQ is leading the charge with the hopes of achieving this trifecta.  They’ve recently announced a partnership with Random House Publishing Group to jointly develop original IPs for both books and video games, having already achieved a level of success with the Homefront franchise.  They’re also coordinating with the SyFy network to simultaneously launch the Red Faction video game and film on the TV channel in May.

THQ’s efforts are likely prescient of how transmedia will continue to develop in the near future.  According to VentureBeat, the game publisher and SyFy planned the timing of the movie and game over the course of a few years to ensure that they would be released simultaneously.  And with Random House, their goal is to work from the ground up to create original IPs that are cohesive and integral to the universe.

Danny Bilson of THQ knows that they need to be judicious in their transmedia strategies: “What I care about on transmedia is whether it’s going to be good, since that is the risk.  It’s bad if it cheapens the brand or content.”

RockStar Games’ Dan Houser made a similar statement on transmedia as well: “…with an ever more discerning audience, the goals of taking something from film-to-games or game-to-film have to be more than financial. If you feel the property has something about it that is universal or could work in another medium, and it is not simply about making easy money, then that is something worthwhile.”

Creating a transmedia universe is a major investment, and going forward we can expect to see more of these partnerships between publishers coming together in order to maximize return and to offer rich, complex worlds for their users to explore.