Cosplay, IP, and studios

Back when my book, Cosplay: A History was coming out in 2022, I pitched NPR's Planet Money on a piece about the relationship between fandom and studios. I wrote a bit in the book about how that relationship was frosty and uncomfortable for a long time: some studios had a heavy hand when it came to people using their IP in this way, and that translated into the sort of underground nature of the cosplay world for a long time.

This is a thing that happens when you're releasing a book: ideally, you and your publicist will pitch a whole bunch of outlets about it, sometimes pulling out certain angles that best fit whatever publication you're pitching. I've been a fan of Planet Money for a long time and had long thought that this particular topic would be of interest. At the time, they'd run an episode about Spider-man and the licensing deal that Marvel struck with Sony, and that prompted me to send the pitch to them.

They were interested: they did some work on it and I interviewed with them, but ultimately, the timing wasn't quite right. If memory serves, there were a lot of other economic things happening that summer, especially around Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But I kept in touch and this year, they let me know that they were doing a series for their daily podcast The Indicator about the economics of Hollywood! (The prior episodes are about the time when New Jersey was the filming capitol of the country, state tax credits for filmmakers, and how China became a box office powerhouse.)

The episode is now out: I’m in there talking about costuming and cosplay, and they spoke with some other cosplayers as well about their experiences, and take a look at not only the story of cosplay, but how groups like the 501st Legion interact with their parent studio (Lucasfilm) and how both have found ways to coexist to one another’s benefit.

Being radio, they're crunched for time, but they were able to cram a lot into the nine minutes for this episode. If you want to learn more about this topic, I've got a chapter's worth of more detail in my book, including with some folks they weren't able to interview for this piece.

Give it a listen! This was a fun interview, and I'm happy not just as the author of a book about the topic, but as a fan of the podcast. I've always found it to be an interesting and informative listen.