Here's a telling story about the way the movie business used to work. In 1929 Walt Disney was approached in a New York City hotel lobby by a man offering $300 for the right to put Mickey Mouse's image on writing tablets. Disney, who needed the money, accepted on the spot. And thus in an altogether offhand manner was born the first officially licensed piece of Mickey Mouse junk.
Here's a telling story about the way the movie business works today. Last year, after shooting was completed on Flipper, which Universal was expecting to be one of its big summer movies for 1996, writer-director Alan Shapiro was approached by the studio's merchandising department. The executives had a problem: there were only three characters in the film suitable for licensing to stuffed-animal makers--Flipper, Scar the Hammerhead Shark and Pete the Pelican. Toy manufacturers were demanding a fourth to round out the Flipper line. "But the movie's been shot," Shapiro argued. "It's too late to add a fourth character." Nevertheless, Shapiro and the executives screened a rough cut of the film and noticed a montage sequence during which a sea turtle swam by. And thus in an altogether calculated manner was born Sam the Turtle. His likeness flooded toy stores nationwide last summer, even though he appeared in literally one shot.
That may sound like a case of putting the cart before the horse, but in Hollywood the cart and horse have been near equal partners ever since Star Wars demonstrated that revenues from film-related action figures, magnets and whatnot could rival a movie's ticket sales--and in at least two cases, Batman and Jurassic Park, even surpass box-office revenues. Some estimates place the overall movie tie-in business at $10 billion annually in retail sales worldwide. Entertainment executives make no bones about merchandising's importance. "It's something we all live with every day of our lives," says Richard Cook, chairman of Disney's motion picture group. Time Warner chairman, Gerald Levin, was perhaps excessively frank when he recently talked up Warner Bros.' big holiday release. "Space Jam isn't a movie," he averred, according to the New York Times. "It's a marketing event."
That's a pretty accurate assessment of a movie that drips with so many plugs for products that the characters joke about it in the script. The film, which links Michael Jordan with Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and the rest of the Looney Tunes stable, has generated more than 200 spin-off items that Warner is hoping will eventually pull in $1 billion. That would be on top of the $3 billion already generated annually by Looney Tunes paraphernalia. But Space Jam is different from most movies in that it not only feels as if it were inspired by a TV commercial, it actually was (by Nike's Hare Jordan ad).
Space Jam's biggest competitor on the paraphernalia front will be Disney's new 101 Dalmatians, which hits theaters this week. The movie has a more traditional, if no less disheartening, provenance: it is a blowsy John Hughes-produced remake of the gently witty 1961 Disney cartoon--a live-action remake that would have no reason to exist except that Disney knows the sight of 99 Dalmatian puppies will be irresistible to children and licensees alike. That would seem to be borne out by the fact that more than 130 companies are involved in various Dalmatians products and promotions.