Why broccoli holds the secret to movie franchises, what scaring mice has to do with staying relevant, and why nerds and geeks will rule the world.
In 1998, none of the top 10 biggest films were sequels or superhero movies, and films based on comics accounted for just 0.69% of the box office.
In 20 years, a lot has changed. In 2018, all of the 10 biggest films were either sequels, prequels, or extensions of a franchise. Marvel studios is at the forefront of this phenomenon, with their movies grossing more than $17 Billion in the last 10 years.
What can we learn about creating things from Marvel’s meteoric success?
The movie The Martian (2015), directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon, about an astronaut stranded on Mars was a huge success — it grossed almost $630 million, was the 10th biggest film of the year, and was nominated for 7 academy awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay.
The book it was based on was an Amazon bestseller and stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 76 weeks. What you might not know, is that it started as a meagre story series written on the author, Andy Weir’s blog.
Ideas spread most reliably when they piggyback off an existing network of closely connected and interested people.
While he always had a passion for writing, as the son of a particle physicist and electrical engineer, Weir took the economically safe option and studied programming in university.
As he started experimenting with writing on the internet, he realized that his readers were like him —
They’re picky, little, snot nosed brats when it comes to science, which I am… You read something and you’re like, well that’s not right, and you’re taken out of the story entirely.So I wanted to make sure dorks like me would enjoy the book I was writing, so I put a huge amount of effort into being as scientifically accurate as possible.
He crafted his story for a very niche group of highly skilled scientists, programmers, and engineers. Each couple of months he would write a chapter, and he’d get feedback from his readers, “and they would tell me all the mistakes I made”.
<aside> 💡 Successful ideas grow most predictably when they tap into a small network of people who do not see themselves as mainstream, but rather bound by an idea or commonality they consider special.
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