Striker Entertainment’s Russell Binder on seeing growth with feature film franchises, as well as leaning into digital and UGC, plus categories such as health and beauty, food and beverage and DTC.
Licensors and agents based outside the UK share their takeaways from 2024 and their goals for 2025, the challenges affecting the licensing industry and the opportunities waiting to be seized, plus the one word they’d use to sum up business in the year just gone and the one we’re in now.
Today: US: Russell Binder, founding partner, Striker Entertainment.
“2024 was a good year for Striker. We have some strong and steady IP, including Five Nights at Freddy’s, Blade Runner and AMC’s The Walking Dead, and we picked up some fantastic new projects like DOMO, Emily the Strange, and a 45 year old horror IP that we intend to announce early this year.
We have continued to grow our film and TV production business, which focuses on adapting IP and has some big projects in production and development in Hollywood.
Anxiety and speculation surrounding tariffs is a big challenge right now. Shelf space continues to shrink while IP churn appears to be increasing.
However, I think next year is going to be exciting as new technologies continue to make our business more efficient. Based on 2024’s box office performance, we’re encouraged about how feature film franchises can perform in today’s market. We see growth there, but are leaning into digital and UGC, and categories of products including food and beverage, health and beauty, and DTC.
Transformative sums up 2024. For 2025, I have two words: guarded optimism.”
This feature originally appeared in the spring 2025 edition of Licensing Source Book. To read the full publication, click on this link.
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