The Flash Still Isn’t Done Embarrassing Itself
At this point, if you told us Reverse Flash was real and he really did change reality to make the world hate The Flash, we’d believe you. The recent film starring controversial star Ezra Miller failed to gain any significant box office and will go down as the biggest financial flop in the studio’s long history. And just when it looked like The Flash was done embarrassing itself, IGN reports that Warner Bros. Discovery will be releasing the film as an NFT that fans can purchase that allows fans to engage in limited and disappointing features that are billed as an “immersive Web3 experience.”
Fortunately, you will still be able to buy The Flash in more traditional forms, including digital and Blu-Ray, so buying an NFT isn’t the only way to bring this film home. But that brings us to the big question: why would a fan choose to buy the film this way rather than a more traditional way? In short, what do you actually get with this exclusive and immersive Web3 experience?
The Flash is being turned into a blockchain movie as Warner Bros. Discovery released the film as an NFT.
The blunt answer is that you don’t get very much. Buying The Flash as an NFT gives you access to a 4K digital version of the film as well as access to “five digital locations.” At these locations, fans can access AR collectibles that allow access to “exclusive content and behind-the-scenes footage.”
Unfortunately, this sounds like the equivalent of special features on a disc, and fans online have already been joking about how all of this special content looks like it came from the menu of a 2005 DVD.
In addition to the features above, buying The Flash as an NFT also gives access to a “DC3 Super Power Pack NFT from the DC NFT Marketplace” as well as random art featuring characters from the film, with some of this art being rarer than others.
Buying The Flash as an NFT gives you access to a 4K digital version of the film as well as access to “five digital locations.”
It seems clear that Warner Bros. Discovery wants to leverage the excitement collectors feel in opening up a pack of cards and finding a very rare card. But none of that changes the most fundamental problem: it is far, far too late for the studio to capitalize on the hype of NFTs.
The NFT Downfall
Well before The Flash came out, NFTs were being hyped by various tech bros as the next big thing, and this led to companies like the Bored Ape Yacht Club launching expensive NFTs that they expected to get more valuable over time.
Studios and game developers became interested in the possibilities, but as consumers realized most NFTs were just expensive JPEG files, Bloomberg reports the NFT market dropped 97 percent from its former peak. So even though The Flash is supposed to be the fastest man alive, it looks like the studio was, ironically, way too slow in jumping on the NFT train.
However, don’t look for that train to completely stop anytime soon: even though The Flash NFT seems to be dead on arrival in the eyes of fans, Warner Bros. Discovery is still exploring other ways to make this work, including selling the first Superman and Lord of the Rings films as NFTs.
Honestly, we just wish the studio would realize that Gollum speaks for most of us when it comes to the very idea of buying a JPEG or watching a DVD menu on the blockchain: “we hates it!”
