Blog: IP)

The modern entertainment industry is a tale of re-invention. The need for vast amounts of content to justify the value of a subscription video on-demand (SVOD) service has made the artists, series, and franchises of yesteryear just as valuable to platforms as the next blockbuster hit.

TikTok sensations and The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical composers, Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, are being sued by subscription video on demand (SVOD) giant Netflix, and it raises the question: how far can fan creators go before they infringe intellectual property (IP)? “What if Bridgerton was a musical?” Back when Bridgerton series one was released at the end of 2020, Barlow and Bear took on a project to create a musical surrounding the Bridgerton storyline.

Building and maintaining cross-generational appeal in entertainment is hard. A key challenge is in catering to seemingly wildly different consumer segments with the inherent risk of targeting ‘kind of everybody’ , which may lead to true fandom with nobody.