"Write original stories," they said. "Come up with your own characters and stop wasting time scribbling that fanfiction," they said. Well, it turns out that if you want to make it as a writer in Hollywood, you had better learn to write for existing characters and universes, and some familiarity with fanfiction can be helpful.
Oh sure, franchise films have been around forever, and sequels and reboots are nothing new. However, over the past couple of years some of our media is starting to look an awful lot like the stuff that I remember posting and reading on Livejournal in the mid-aughts. Exhibit A is Disney's "Descendants" franchise, the wildly popular series of live-action TV movies about the offspring of various Disney characters. They go to high school with each other, date each other, have their spats, and, of course, regularly break out into song. The main character is a purple-haired girl named Mal, the daughter of Maleficent, and there's been endless speculation as to who Mal's father is. For the record, speculating over Maleficent's love life is something that I, a hardcore Disney nerd, find absolutely hilarious. But as a kid, I would have been all over that.
Also, consider that the "Descendants" version of Maleficent, played by Kristin Chenoweth, is the fourth version of the character that currently exists in an entirely separate universe from the others. There's the original 1959 animated version who still pops up in video games and Disney theme park extravaganzas. There's the live action theatrical film version, played by Angelina Jolie, who appeared in the 2014 "Maleficent," and will return in the sequel coming in 2020. Then there's the Maleficent who appears in "Once Upon a Time," played by Kristin Bauer van Straten. That version also has a daughter, named Lily. And who's the father? Zorro, the 19th century Spanish Californian vigilante, because the "Once Upon a Time" universe is just that nutty.
A few years ago, I wrote a bit about transmedia, the practice of storytelling over multiple platforms, and the challenges associated with keeping storytelling elements consistent over different types of media aimed at different consumers. What we're seeing Disney do with some of its older IP is to take the opposite strategy, and embrace the idea of multiple versions and multiple takes coexisting. It's the fanfiction mindset of customizing stories to your own particular needs, or in this case the needs of different audiences. "Descendants" is made for 7-12 year olds, and needs Maleficent to be a traditional villain. "Maleficent" is aimed a bit older and more sophisticated, at viewers who can appreciate Maleficent as a complicated, subversive anti-hero.
And why not, in a media age where there are so many different versions of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson running around, James Bond and Doctor Who swap faces every few years, and Marvel movie crossovers are considered massive cultural events? The beauty of the Disney strategy is that it's mining from a decades-old library of characters that only it holds the rights to. This helps to keep a 60 year-old character like Maleficent alive in the public eye and exploit the nostalgia of everyone who grew up with her. Other studios that have tried this have had less success, because of skimpier libraries of children's content, and the public becoming less familiar with public domain characters. Sure, we all know who King Arthur is, but there's not that one iconic pop culture version of him that sticks out in everyone's memory. Mary Poppins, Winnie the Pooh, and the the Little Mermaid don't have this problem.
The irony is that Disney's embrace of the fanfiction mindset means that fanfiction authors are potentially on rockier legal ground. One of the arguments for letting fan authors have their fun is that they tend to write the kinds of stories that the IP holders didn't really do - subversive reexaminations, crazy crossovers, and silly sequels about all the characters having kids who pair up and have their own adventures. Well, times have changed. I don't think Disney's army of lawyers is going to go as far as sending out C&D letters to twelve year-old "Descendants" fanfiction enthusiasts writing about Mal joining the Avengers, but it feels like we're inching in that direction.
Or maybe Disney will just scout them for new writing talent.
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