Anime and Movies Funded by Web3
First, sorry for this issue being late. I’m also prepping the first WEBcouv3r event this week and going to SXSW next week and planning a cross-Canada roadshow for Collision plus I just released an podcast with Emmy Award-winner David Mandel talking about Seinfeld, Eurotrip, comics and movie props - a highlight of 2022 for me.
Second, Substack sent me an update on how this newsletter is doing in its 90 days of existence and 7 issues that have been sent out, and it is doing better than I had hoped. So thank you to the tons of new subs that join every week. I’m doing these bi-weekly because even I have too many newsletters but if you want daily blasts just follow me on Twitter.
Reese is Bringing NFTs to the Movies
Happy International Women’s Day - this came out a few weeks ago but who knew that Elle Woods would be one of NFTs greatest champion: Reese Witherspoon is bringing the ladies NFTs to Hollywood:
Reese’s Hello Sunshine production company sold for $900 MILLION last August and if you think I am excited about the NFT space I highly recommend you listen to her talk about it on NFT NOW:
Boss Beauties and Barbie
I guess Barbie’s first foray into Web3 was a success (see the story I ran in a past issue) so they are back for more teaming up with Boss Beauties for this weeks International Women’s Day! The Barbie NFT will be auctioned by Boss Beauties between March 9-12th via OpenSea, with proceeds benefiting the Barbie Dream Gap Project.
Anime meets Black Mirror meets Crypto
Another superstar female in Web3: Pplpleasr, is dropping a new animation via NFT called Shibuya - “a Web 3 experiment where long-form content is free to watch but monetized on the blockchain to allow viewer participation on the creative process and also shared ownership.” Read more here.
Comic NFT to become a Movie
The NFT comic series HUXLEY by Ben Mauro will become a film produced by Ari Arad - the son of Avi Arad who started making Marvel Movies with the original X-Men and Spider-Man films, and producer of the Ghost in the Shell and Unchartered movies in his own right. I talked about it in the last newsletter. great stuff!
Speaking of NFT-to-movies, Decrypt just made a list - which one gets made first?
And why all this movement? Because DAOs are coming to take a bite out of the Hollywood studios’ lunch - maybe not the Filet Mignon but definitely the steak sandwich:


Amazon and ComiXology not so Invincible Anymore
Not a Web3 story, but a disastrous Web2 comic book story: most people today get their digital comics, like everything else, from Amazon.
Amazon bought ComiXology in 2014 and you can get just about every comic book ever especially the INVINCIBLE comics and graphic novels, watch the Invincible animated series on Amazon Prime Video and buy action figures and merchandise at Amazon.com - did you now this synergy already exists?
Well these past weeks, Amazon has integrated the ComiXology brand into Kindle and the whole thing was a mess. Everyone hates it - even Patton Oswalt - he is the voice of MODOK on Hulu.
I’m sure they will fix it (?) but when your only option to get comics is to go back to the physical comic store - there is one monopoly that needs to be broken. Then again I only buy books from Amazon, so I am part of the problem.
ICYMI: My Digital Comics post on Medium.
NFT Market Cap $26B by End of 2022
I don’t want to put general Web3 news in here, but this is impressive especially in this market and current events. I also found this nugget even more impressive, especially if you think NFTs are the purvey of North America — the Philippines currently houses the most NFT owners per capita at 32% - read it all here.
Attack on Titan NFTs coming soon
Here come more licensed anime/manga properties to the Web3 space. Hajime Isayama’s incredible multi-million volume selling manga and anime Attack on Titan are crashing into our world as NFTs on the Flow blockchain licensed by Kodansha. Sign up now to get in on the launch.
Fun fact: English-language manga sales grew 160% in 2021, which was on top of a 46% growth in 2020! And the manga category itself was attributed with 25%of the overall growth of the book industry in the US last year.
..and Finally:
I saw The Batman in IMAX this weekend, it looked and sounded great but The Nolan Trilogy is still the best by a long margin. What did you think?
Join me on my own NFT journey: The DeviA.N.T.s is coming soon! I am so excited about this project and what we can do with it and how it pertains to all this stuff you just read. The best way to get into this project is to join the Discord.