John Wick, Hunger Games, Twilight Saga NFTs To Be Launched by Lionsgate on Tom Brady's Autograph Platform

Today, Tom Brady's Autograph NFT platform announced a business partnership with Lionsgate film studio and DraftKings digital sports entertainment company. Autograph also revealed it had obtained the multi-year, exclusive NFT rights to Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky, Derek Jeter, Naomi Osaka, and Tony Hawk. Those athletes are joining Autograph's Advisory Board. An official NFT launch is set for later this summer, but Autograph users can sign up now to become part of the early access platform and tokenize their names for free. Brady co-founded Autograph in response to the sudden NFT craze. The company has its headquarters based in Los Angeles.

"Autograph brings users closer to the world's most legendary sports and entertainment icons by working hand in hand with our partners to co-produce exclusive digital collections and experiences that can't be found anywhere else," said Dillon Rosenblatt, Co-Founder/CEO at Autograph in a press release. "Our team is dedicated to providing value to our users through an offering defined by creativity, simplicity and fun as we work to usher in a new era of digital collecting."

"We are honored to partner with these powerful icons and marquee businesses, DraftKings and Lionsgate, as we announce Autograph's expanded Advisory Board and exclusive NFT rights," said Richard Rosenblatt, Co-Founder/Co-Chairman of Autograph. "As the nascent NFT market continues to develop, we are fortunate to enlist these leading partners with additional luminaries to be announced in the near future."

The DraftKings Marketplace will exclusively sell Autograph's sports-related officially licensed NFT content beginning later this summer. Customers will be able to buy, sell and trade digital collectibles using their existing DraftKings account.

"The NFT boom has reinvented the collectibles industry and driven excitement to early-adopting audiences worldwide—including the DraftKings community," said Matt Kalish, DraftKings co-founder/president. "DraftKings Marketplace will sit at the center of this technological and cultural phenomenon, providing our immense existing customer base with an easily accessible experience that rivals all legacy marketplaces. This initial vision in collaboration with Autograph, and its coveted collection of official digital collectibles, is a vital first step as we enter the emergent NFT market. We aim to usher in this new era by introducing millions of collectors to this evolving space while providing beloved content through an intuitive interface built to win over the long term."

Lionsgate will launch Autograph's entertainment vertical with its own properties. The first wave focuses on the John Wick, The Hunger Games, and Twilight Saga franchises, as well as Mad Men and Dirty Dancing.

"We're delighted to partner with best-in-class Autograph to launch our leading film and television properties in the fast-growing NFT marketplace," said Jenefer Brown, EVP & Head of Lionsgate Global Live, Interactive & Location-Based Entertainment. "NFTs present a tremendous opportunity for mixed-reality world building experiences, deepening user engagement and interaction and fostering a community for our hundreds of millions of global consumers to create one-of-a-kind digital collections and Autograph is the optimal destination for this discovery."

The sudden popularity of NFTs (non-fungible tokens), and their embrace by corporations, remains controversial. NFTs are digital certificates of authenticity that prove the copy of an image they're attached to is the creator-sold authentic "original." Many critics note that NFTs pose a threat to the environment. NFTs and the cryptocurrencies that use the same technology draw considerable power to their servers to run the recurring programs that verify the "proof-of-work" needed to determine each work's uniqueness.