How Mila Kunis did ‘Stoner Cats’ with NFTs

On one level, Stoner Cats is a rather charming animated series about a groovy older woman (voiced by Jane Fonda) and her five feline friends. One fateful day, the cats accidentally get high on the old lady’s supplies and feel sentient. On another level, it is an experiment in alternative funding via the emerging world of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).

The cast includes a plethora of A-list talents – Fonda, Mila Kunis, Chris Rock, Ashton Kutcher, Seth McFarland – who play the eponymous stoner cats.

According to an online FAQ, the animated world of the show is brought to life by “the creative forces behind Toy Story 2, Spider-Verse, Happy Feet, Cryptokitties and much more …”

Wait, crypto kitten?

Yes, crypto kittens. It’s a whole thing.

The crypto and NFT world is buzzing over the new series, but Stoner Cats the Show has nothing to do with NFTs and anything to do with CATs on THC. The first (and so far only) episode is available on YouTube.

The sale of 10,420 NFTs funded the production of Stoner Cats.

Pitching the idea to Hollywood

The traditional way to get the money it takes to make a top notch animated series is to pass the idea on to Hollywood, which these days encompasses everything from movie studios to television stations to streaming platforms.

An old lady and her cats being baked was too hot for Hollywood.

Mila Kunis (That 70s Show, Black Swan, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and her production company Orchard Farms originally went this route with Stoner Cats after developing the idea in-house for more than a year.

But despite the star power of Kunis, they found that “the drug content was a disadvantage” in getting quality offers. And that, despite just wanting to tell a heartwarmingly healthy story, inspired by the show’s co-creator’s mother Sarah Cole, who turned to medicinal cannabis for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.

Apparently it’s too hot for Hollywood to bake an old lady and her cats. Stop and think about it the next time you see a movie poster where the selling point is a promise to deliver epic levels of ultra-violence.

Plan B: Cryptocurrencies and NFTs

Fortunately, Mila Kunis spent her quarantine time fully immersed in a disruptive new tech game, one with the potential to undermine the old media gatekeepers.

“Some people have started baking or knitting, I’ve gotten deep into crypto and NFTs,” she told Conan O’Brien on his late night talk show in June. “And then I was like, ‘Well, that was fun,’ so during the pandemic I helped create a piece of entertainment called Stoner Cats that we’ll be releasing soon. You can buy an NFT stoner cat and that’s your mark. “

Conan, for the record, didn’t seem to understand NFTs any better than most people. But he definitely found the Stoner Cats vibe, as evidenced by the fact that less than a week later, during the interview with Seth Rogen, he smoked a joint live on camera.

“Cats just sit around anyway,” Conan joked to Kunis. The implication is, why shouldn’t they get stoned?

Raised $ 8.3 million in 35 minutes

When the Stoner Cats team released their first batch of 10,420 NFTs in late July, the entire series sold out in 35 minutes – grossing around $ 8.3 million.

Do you now want to know what an NFT is?

Fortunately, there is a wide variety of online explainers to choose from based on your interest and technological acumen. Most importantly, for the purpose of this story, it is important to understand that each of these 10,420 NFTs represents a unique Stoner Cat illustration that is stored on the blockchain, just as cryptocurrencies are stored.

People who spent $ 800 on a Stoner Cat NFT to own them did so for a variety of reasons, including a desire to help the creators and creation of the show to be a bit “non-fungible “Owning art and possibly wanting to get in on the ground floor of a lucrative investment opportunity, as the NFT art and collectors market has been booming lately.

Resold for a profit of $ 60k

The coveted Ms. Stoner NFT token has already been resold on a secondary market for a profit of $ 60,000. The current owner has now listed it on Ethereum with a sales price of $ 81 million.

Speaking of Ethereum, the co-founder of the cryptocurrency, Vitalik Buterin – one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2021 – also lends his voice to the cast of the Stoner Cats. But most of the time he’s just on the go.

A women-run crypto team

The brains of the project is The 3050 Gang, one of the first all-female crypto teams to have a huge impact on what co-founder Mila Kunis calls a very male-dominated field. And their goal isn’t just to make money, promote NFTs, and put on a show about seriously stoned cats. Their overall goal is to develop a new funding model for creative projects in which artists work directly with the public.

Kunis and her team don’t just create an animated series. You are treading a new path in artistic financing.

Technology aside, buying a Stoner Cats NFT isn’t that much different from buying an old Disney animation cell, except that you can’t buy it second-hand at a collectors’ store, you can go straight to the artist. It’s basically a new form of crowdsourcing that involves the ability to own a potentially valuable piece of the creation you’re sponsoring – and put the means of production in that artist’s hands.

“Consumers want to see and hear stories that would otherwise not be produced,” said Morgan Beller, general partner with the 3050 Gang, on an episode of the NFX podcast. “Consumers also want to participate in this creative control (and rightly so) and belong to something.”

Is this an investment, a contribution, or just hype?

Is there a hype about NFTs in general and Stoner Cats in particular? No doubt. Hype is a natural part of art, investment, entertainment, and any combination of the three.

But the way things stand, a humble little show about a bunch of soaring cats just streaked without asking anyone’s permission or making a single artistic compromise. If thousands of people are spending millions of dollars buying a cartoon cat hoping for a return, why is that less rational than collecting postage stamps or Picassos?

When Hollywood sponsors a film, the studios and streamers emphatically expect a return on their money. So why should it be any different?

Yet even after the first run of Stoner Cats NFTs sold like catnip, the project’s backers continue to cautiously downplay the investment angle in favor of more utopian ideals like community art and expression.

Because, as Ms. Stoner herself says in the premiere episode, “material property is a social construct”.

David beehive

Seasoned cannabis journalist David Bienenstock is the author of “How to Smoke Pot (Properly): A Highbrow Guide to Getting High” (2016 – Penguin / Random House) and co-host and co-creator of the podcast “Great Moments in Weed History.” Abdullah and Bean. ”Follow him on Twitter @pot_handbook.

View David Beehive’s articles

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