In wake of the #BlueSky news, a thread on studios, film rights, and what might be expected, based on my limited observations in the biz and knowing folks who've had film rights bought. Please correct me if you know better. 1/15

Big studios exist to make $, not celebrate the magic of film. Every movie is weighed viz. cost/benefit. If they buy film rights (cost), it's because they think it'll make them $$ (benefit). OR, they don't want a competing studio to make $$ off that property. 2/15

Lots of movies die, or are killed, in development, for lots of reasons. Studios generally don't announce them until they're inevitable. Nimona was announced before Disney bought BlueSky. It was a high-profile property and good PR. 3/15

Dunno what went on here, but when I was at D, lots of forces acted on a film besides 'is it good?' Parks & merch tie-ins were paramount; they make more $ than box office. If a film doesn't serve these, there's no reason to make it. 4/15

A studio always evaluates whether a film is in its interests and can pull the plug at any time if it's not. They can pour a lot of time and money into something and not release it. See: 5/15

Why waste all this money? Because expenses are good! Tax is charged on profits: there are lots of ways to lower your profits, and investing in R&D is one of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting 6/15

Another tax writeoff is a commercial loss. Animated movies usually have to make >$300m to be profitable. If they think it won't, or there are internal reasons for the movie to fail, the studio will 'bury' it so as to write off as much of the budget as possible. 7/15

(Don't discount internal politics in these matters – all the buried movies I know of were murdered by internal politics.) 8/15

If they can afford it, studios also keep people on payroll to lock up their talent and not allow them to work for a competitor, even if they're paying them to do nothing. Talent at BlueSky wasn't making money for Dreamworks or Netflix. 9/15

It looks to me like D thought investing in BlueSky was worth the expense when it had billions in Parks and Marvel blockbusters to offset, but now that's dried up, the loss isn't useful to them as a writeoff anymore. 10/15

So where does this put Nimona? Re (2), we can pretty much count on Disney NOT putting it in a cardboard box on the curb with a 'cheap to a good home' sign on it. They don't want to give another studio a chance to hit that jackpot. 11/15

BUT, film rights vary, and are usually limited: often, if the film isn't released within the term of the rights, they revert to the creator, and another studio can buy them. (e.g. We keep getting Spiderman movies bc Sony wants to keep the rights.) 12/15

The work already done on Nimona cannot be picked up by another studio, because copyright. They'd have to buy the work off Disney, who own the rights to the development art etc., and the film adaptation rights until they expire, and they're not going to sell these. 13/15

But another studio can buy the film rights to the book, when they come up for renewal, and develop it from scratch, with their own team and their own distribution. 14/15

There may yet be a Nimona film, from a less conservative studio that has less riding on its blockbuster success. This mega sucks for BlueSky folks but they'll move on; they're very talented and employable. And now you know more about how the sausage is made. 15/15

[obligatory promo tweet] I left the animation industry to make a graphic novel about a doomed polar expedition (no thematic resonance with any productions I've worked on): https://www.patreon.com/tealin  and @WorstJourneyGN ... And no, I won't be selling the movie rights to Disney.