AUSTIN, Texas—Familiar IP (intellectual property) runs rampant on TV these days no matter where a viewer turns. Netflix openly exploits its access to the Marvel universe and has a penchant for reinvigorating classic IP across medium (from Wet Hot American Summer to Fuller House). Small cable networks offer numerous examples: CW has opted for DC with Arrow and The Flash; FX has Fargo; SyFy has The Expanse; Starz has American Gods; and on and on. Even the big networks have embraced this, and recently they can’t seem to leave vintage movies alone (whether we’re discussing Fox’s Minority Report and Lethal Weapon attempts or NBC’s departed-too-soon Hannibal).

At this summer’s ATX Television Festival, execs from major players like HBO, Freeform, Marvel, and Dreamworks took the stage together hoping to shed some light on the trend. High rates of IP recycling haven’t coincided with a lack of engaging originals (see: Stranger Things Mad Men , Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul, The Americans, GLOW, etc.). Evidently, the modern TV landscape offers room for both, so why the glut of familiar franchises? Everyone in attendance had plenty of theories.

“To start, it’s a risky business, and most of the stuff we develop just fails,” Marvel’s Grant Gish said. “But when you have a leg up—a great book, comic book, old movie, or TV show—it eliminates some of that.” Gish notes a known Marvel entity carries with it automatic audience awareness. And if network execs remain conservative when greenlighting productions, assurances of an inherent audience can go a long way.

Freeform’s Simran Sethi thinks existing IP can also attract more than a network. “In a world where there’s growing competition for writers and actors, being able to attract talent to work on something is part of it, too,” she said. “We’re absolutely buying property so we can give writers something cool to work on.”

To that end, Sethi later discussed the upcoming Marvel’s New Warriors series. While Gish noted the character Squirrel Girl could likely carry her own series, this version is based on Zeb Wells’ books and will be written in a more comedic tone using an ensemble. That meant Freeform could get more actors/writers involved (and have room to possibly fit pre-existing partnerships). Set to debut in 2018, the production has already landed young comedic actors like Milana Vayntrub (from AT&T commercials but also Silicon Valley), Jeremy Tardy (Rashid on Dear White People), and Matthew Moy (Lars on Steven Universe).

Jack Plunkett / ATX Festival

Jack Plunkett / ATX Festival

Jack Plunkett / ATX Festival

Jack Plunkett / ATX Festival

Nathan Mattise

Creators get nostalgic, too

Naturally, creatives and networks aren’t the only two invested parties in this IP revival. The people who create these iconic films, shows, and books (or, at least the people who own the rights) ultimately get final say on whether television projects are even explored. How do they decide what proposals are worth risking an IP’s legacy for?

“To start, we’re always looking for passion,” said Peter Gal of Dreamworks Animation Television. “We cull all ideas and bring it to creatives; then, if someone has a passion, we see if their take is the right one.” From there, Gal said more questions—does an IP have new relevance, has it shown longevity—come into play.

“Our library is quite significant,” he continued. “We have everything from Baby Huey—a giant, mentally challenged duck in a diaper who we can’t figure out what to do with as a character—but we also have Rocky and Bullwinkle and some of the most important animated characters of all time. When we did Rocky & Bullwinkle a few years ago, it was born from a Cold War ethos. Does that matter to kids today? We developed it.”

A show by any other name? The panel went down numerous rabbit holes, including one uber-nerdy discussion on whether an existing IP’s title has value (e.g., Silence of the Lambs was Hannibal on TV). Here’s what a few execs had to offer: The panel went down numerous rabbit holes, including one uber-nerdy discussion on whether an existing IP’s title has value (e.g., Silence of the Lambs was Hannibal on TV). Here’s what a few execs had to offer: Maggioni (Amblin): “We use focus groups—Minority Report was an old enough title that it didn’t add value to the launch campaign, but Animaniacs does.” McCaffrey (HBO): “[With Westworld], it wasn’t just fans of the movie that came to the series, and I think people watched it and said ‘Whoa, that’s a movie, too?’ It helped, but it wasn’t crucial.” Gish (Marvel): “You do often have that giant Marvel flag on everything you put on screen [e.g., Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, not simply Agents of SHIELD]. It’s a built-in mark of quality that something exciting is coming, and it worked really well with our launch of Jessica Jones. I was ignorant and didn’t know much about her; it’s just a boring name without any context. But you put Marvel in front and suddenly there’s interest.”

Alex Maggioni of Amblin (which also falls under the NBCUniversal umbrella with Dreamworks) echoed similar sentiments. Her company stands behind some of the most iconic franchises of the 1980s—Back To The Future, ET, Roger Rabbit—so “you don’t want to touch them without good reason,” she said. Minority Report happened because Godzilla ( 2014 edition ) writer Max Borenstein approached the company with a take her team liked, for instance. It’s the same reason Amblin recently OK’d a reboot for Animaniacs. (So far, details on that project remain scarce. Only Amblin’s own Steven Spielberg is attached publicly.)

“That’s an existing IP; you’d be surprised by how many calls it generates,” Maggioni said. “There are so many writers who are passionate about it, who sing me the theme song in meetings. So we don’t look everyday [at archival projects], but we look when someone comes in and says ‘Oh my god, what about this?’”

Outside networks and creatives aren’t the only ones approaching the Amblins and Dreamworks of the world, either. Internally, these IP holders are having the same discussions. As they continue to create new works and consider existing properties, increasingly these creators adopt a proactive approach in bringing franchises to series. Dreamworks, in fact, has started thinking about TV simultaneously with, and sometimes even before, a film with the same IP.

“Disney lets a film come out, sees how it does, does a sequel, then maybe TV comes up; Dreamworks is different,” Gal said. “When we pitched this deal to Netflix in 2012—1,000 episodes and 12 series, which is now 14—a lot were based on things that hadn’t even come out yet. But in our world, there’s almost always an angle to turn it into a kids’ TV series. So we look at each one and decide if we want it to hew closely: Do we use the same CG look? Should it focus on the main or secondary character? Would we rather make it 2D or make it more comedic than the feature? We develop our TV shows way earlier in the lifecycle of a film than anyone else in Hollywood.”

And as podcasts have started attracting TV interest (Lord & Miller have This American Life’s Serial at Fox; Zach Braff is attached to Gimlet Media’s StartUp at ABC), Amblin actually has “four or five” podcasts in development with intent to use those as creative seeds. “Not only is it a good proof of concept, but you can build an audience,” Maggioni notes. (She declined to offer more details beyond saying that one is a scripted sci-fi podcast that excites her.)



The elephant White Walker in the room

The biggest IP on TV right now belongs to George RR Martin and HBO. Game of Thrones recently started its seventh and penultimate season, but panel host Dan Fienberg noted “last I heard, there are between 4 and 22 spin-offs in development.” He asked HBO’s Kathleen McCaffrey, point blank, what qualifies as a “valid” GoT spin-off, but the exec kept things ambiguous.

“I don’t think we know—we honestly didn’t know GoT was going to become what it did, so you can’t guess at something like that,” she said. “With the spin-offs, you hope [for similar success], but you don’t know. You write the script and hope it can match the fandom. [For now], we’re going to let the folks write the scripts and take it from there. A lot of people are hopeful, so because of that there’s a lot of pressure, of course.”