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Comment by mortenjorck | Hacker News Reader

  Some observers feel that the franchise, by only limiting 
  itself to theatrical movies, remains vastly under-utilized by 
  21st century standards, where expectations are to exploit IP 
  across all mediums, push out merchandising for all age 
  brackets and have spin-offs and cinematic universes.

As unlikely as it may seem for Apple to be bidding on the rights to 007 in the first place, it seems vastly less likely for Apple to use them for anything less focused than a franchise of films or an iTunes-exclusive TV series. Disney-level, cross-media IP exploitation has to be among the most foreign concepts I can imagine for the company.

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Not sure why they'd think that, there's been video games (some good ones, even), there are regular limited edition watch releases, perfume, there's plenty of product placement in the movies themselves (cars, bikes, drinks...). Could they do much more of it without going over the top? It's not that clear.

> spin-offs and cinematic universes.

I suspect it is about this. TV shows, spin-off movies based on Felix...

But I think that would tarnish the brand. Bond has always been about long-awaited epic movies, not yearly re-hashes of the same stuff.

So was Star Wars. But it turns out it's more profitable as the latter.

I'm pretty sure Bond has grossed a lot more than Star Wars. I wonder how profitable Star Wars will be after the 24th installment. I'm guessing not very.

You'd be wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films...

Imagine how much further ahead Star Wars will be after the 24th installment

> The films in the cross-franchise Marvel Cinematic Universe have collectively grossed the most, amassing over $12 billion at the box office, although the Eon James Bond films have earned over $14 billion in total when adjusted to current prices

I'm not even sure Star Wars is in the top 3.

And I think interest will wane after the current crop of movies being ~12 let alone 24. Its all character exploitation at this point, and there aren't many left who's lives haven't been explored yet.

Star Wars was art and had integrity. Unfortunately selling Jar Jar Binks dolls is more "profitable". The Bond franchise is art and has integrity, let's hope it can keep it.

  Could they do much more of it without going over the
  top? It's not that clear.

Star Wars manages to produce prodigious amounts of merch and people eat it up. 188 different Lego sets [2]. 70+ trading cards [3]. 150+ video games [4]. Innumerable tee shirts [1]. They'll even put their brand on bags of fruit.

You can extract a lot of money from fans - especially if your franchise has inter-generational appeal.

[1] https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=star+wars+shirt&tbm=isch [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Lego_Star_Wars_sets [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_trading_card [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Wars_video_games

That might be what the Broccoli family wants - a company that will protect the 007 IP with just movies and not dilute/exploit it with other stuff.

The funny thing about Apple is that it gets a whole lot of promo from TV series and such already. This because Hollywood pretty much runs on their platform (probably thanks to getting the GUI out there, being the launch platform for Photoshop, and thus the whole industry learned Apple by rote memorization).

Thus whenever the script required a computer, phone or something similar in the shot, it will be an Apple product. Because that was what the staff was carrying.

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