‘Rick and Morty’ creator’s show about a flawed family of humans, gods, and monsters in a mythical ancient Greek city will be curated on Blockchain with a digital marketplace selling all sorts of NFT merchandise; series to debut in 2022.
As announced yesterday during Fox Entertainment’s virtual Upfront Presentation, Dan Harmon’s recently reported new animated series has an official name: Krapopolis. The show marks the first production to come from the Emmy Award-winning Rick and Morty and Community creator’s direct animation deal signed with Fox last year. The series is fully owned and financed by Fox Entertainment and is being produced by its Emmy Award-winning animation studio, Bento Box Entertainment.
According to Fox, Krapopolis will serve as the first-ever animated series curated entirely on blockchain; Fox and Bento Box are officially getting into the NFT business. The company will launch a dedicated marketplace for the show that will curate and sell digital goods, ranging from NFTs of one-of-a-kind character and background art and GIFs, to tokens that provide exclusive social experiences to engage and reward super fans.
What are NFTs you ask? Non-fungible tokens. There, feel better? I thought not.
NFTs, in simplest terms, are digital assets, of any kind, from a simple jpg to a huge digital work of art, that are “authenticated” as unique through blockchain technology, which in addition to supporting cryptocurrency (like bitcoin or dogecoin – which are not unique and therefore fungible tokens) can store additional information that makes an item unique. Think of it this way – you can trade one bitcoin for another, and they are of equal value – an NFT is a single item, unique to the world, validated by the underlying blockchain technology.
Media companies, artists, all sorts of entities are jumping onto the NFT bandwagon to sell their digital IP, monetizing assets, such as magazine covers, photos, basically anything made from zeroes and ones, now that their “authenticity” can be assured.
On the heels of the Fox Krapopolis announcement, AWN was contacted by Toonbox Studio, who noted that their recently announced animated series, Take My Muffin, is the first animated series to use crypto-financing through the sale of NFTs of production assets. They announced their show’s development in an April 18 tweet:
Buyers of the TMM NFT tokens get access to all the development materials from the series as well as sub-governmental tokens. The sells were started now!#NFTs #nftcollector #nftcollectors #NFTartists #nftart https://t.co/kU7Wz5tQKu
— TMM (@TMM66131654) April 19, 2021
Harmon is well known for co-creating and executive producing the multiple Emmy Award-winning animated comedy, Rick and Morty. He also created and executive-produced the hit comedy series Community, which ran for six seasons, garnering multiple Emmy nominations, Critics Choice Awards and other accolades. In 2015, he executive-produced Charlie Kaufman’s Academy Award-nominated animated feature film Anomalisa.
With regards to Krapopolis and Take My Muffin, regardless of either's claim at being “the first,” news of both shows further demonstrates that NFTs and blockchain are slowly making their way into mainstream digital content commerce. And despite many people's reluctance to accept or otherwise acknowledge blockchain technology, isn’t any tech system that provides a means for artists and content creators to securely monetize their work product through a digital authentication system a good thing?
Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
