Superplastic has made a lot of wacky NFTs and characters, and now Amazon Studios can use them for TV shows or movies first.
Amazon’s venture capital arm, Alexa Fund, led a $20 million Series A-4 funding round for the 3D character studio Superplastic. Superplastic makes “synthetic celebrities” and vinyl toys, and it has previously released NFT collections on Ethereum and teamed up with big brands such as Gucci and Epic Games’ “Fortnite.”
Google Ventures, Galaxy Digital, Sony Japan, Animoca Brands, Craft Ventures, and others also took part in the round, bringing the total amount of money Superplastic has raised to date to $58 million.
Amazon Studios will get a “first-look deal” with Superplastic for any TV or film pitches starring Superplastic’s characters. Amazon Studios, which produced “The Boys” and “Fleabag,” is developing “The Janky & Guggimon Show,” starring two Superplastic virtual celebrities.
“Janky & Guggimon” will follow the pursuit of fame and wealth by the two main characters. Superplastic’s characters blur the line between fiction and reality, since both Janky and Guggimon have millions of social media followers and are anthropomorphized animals with the ability to break the rules of physics.
A statement says that the two characters are “lazy and spectacularly incompetent best friends.” It calls Janky a “loveable idiot who spends his spare time scamming celebrities” and Guggimon a “fashion icon and master manipulator who’s too narcissistic to care.”
Janky said in a statement why he’s excited about Amazon’s investment and why it’s a big deal.
“We went frum [sic] snatchin’ Amazon boxes off porches, to getting Amazon bags, baby,” he said.
Paul Bernard, who is in charge of Amazon’s Alexa Fund, said in a statement that a big part of the appeal of Superplastic’s characters is that they “meet their customers where they are.”
“We see them as a new class of IP that is going to be increasingly relevant with younger generations,” Bernard said.
“This includes technologies such as synthetics, and virtualization to generative AI and Web3, and more,” he said.
“Amazon wants to place strategic bets on these areas alongside our continued investment in startups furthering voice use cases, as it’s a part of our company’s core values to look towards the future at long-term investments that will position us well, even if it takes some time for these technologies to fully come to fruition in our day-to-day lives,” Bernard added.
Superplastic has created approximately 25,000 NFTs across multiple collections to date, such as a PFP collection ($3.2 million in total volume traded) and an NFT collaboration with Gucci (almost $10 million in volume). Since the launch of their NFT collection Cryptojankyz in July 2021, a total volume of nearly $15.2 million has been exchanged.
Content Source: decrypt.com
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