Rand Marlis, President of CLC Creative Licensing, talks about licensing classic movies

We’ve spoken a couple of times at tradeshows, Rand, so I’m really looking forward to this… Thanks for making time. You’re President of CLC Creative Licensing. For those who don’t know the name, what is that?
We’re an independent licensing company representing classic motion pictures. We’ve been in business over 30 years, and we give rights to manufacturers throughout the world to deliver product in all categories.

That was so succinctly put, Rand! I guess you’ve said it a million times! Ha!
Well, over the years I’ve probably learned how to say it, yes…

The only thing that changes is the number of years. So… You’ve been in the business for over 30 years. What is it that you did before?
I’m trained as an attorney; I’m a member of the California bar.

Really? What took you from attorneying to licensing?
I just like dealing with people! The cut and dried business of being a lawyer was just not for me. And I can guarantee you that I’m better at being an entrepreneur and a salesman than I am being an attorney.

How did you come to run your own company, Rand?
I worked at 20th Century Fox as director of licensing. Basically, my idea was to do what I did at Fox, but independently. We represent classic movie companies… We go out and we solicit manufacturers. We strike deals. We do the advertising and marketing to get the manufacturers. We do the drafting of the contracts. We have people that handle our assets and approvals. We work on samples and we work on finance. And my favorite part: we get paid.

What are some of the classic titles you represent?
We represent StudioCanal, which is a major European producer of current shows… But they have a wonderful library, and we do a lot of work for them on what’s called their catalogue, which is their prior-release product. Some of the big names I think you would know are Rambo, Evil Dead, Escape from New York, Basic Instinct, Terminator…

Wow. That’s a heck of a line up…
Right. And we have over 200 active licensees… These films are all well known and they all have a character that we can take into licensing. We also represent Compass International Pictures. They have a film that is very well known called Halloween; it’s the original slasher killer film with Michael Myers. And we represent Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. We represent some other producers, like the people that have Re-animator and the people that have the movie Drive.

Some of these are massive names, others are very recognisable – but not necessarily so big…
Of course. We don’t have the name or the financing of a Warner Bros. or a Disney who can market and push out the new releases. So I learned long ago that I’m going to lose fighting against studios like them for licensee shelf space. But there are people that like these classic films; people that remember the nostalgia, the fun they had with the products and remember what the films stand for. And that works for us.

What makes that work for you?
Number one, I don’t have to worry about a release date and a marketing budget! I don’t have to worry how successfully a movie’s going to perform at the box office, or about marketing screwing up or someone saying something wrong at the wrong time because my films aren’t gonna change. They are what they are – and I love that. The other thing it allows us to do is talk long-term with licensees. So we can say, “Listen, we don’t have to worry about the new release coming out on X, Y, Z date.” We can say, “Let’s talk about a three-year plan for you guys to make product.”

Right. Because even if a franchise is ongoing, the titles that started it are set in stone.
Exactly. So if you’re going to do Rambo… Well, I don’t know if you remember the Rambo series? It originally started with John Rambo, an army vet who’s fighting the system… Then they put him in Rambo II where he goes to Southeast Asia. In Rambo III, he goes to the Middle East. We represent all three films. That means – if you want to creat Rambo figures – we can plan to do Rambo this year, Rambo II the next year…

Got it. You’re planning around what certainly is, not what potentially might be.
And that gives us a chance to really structure things in a professional manner rather than worrying about, as I say, new releases. So it’s worked well for us, and we’re one of the few companies that really just focuses on the classics.

Earlier, you said all the films have ‘characters’. Looking at your brochure I think that’s an extremely well-chosen word. And I wonder if that, in itself, negates my needing to ask what unites the titles you represent?
Well, the characters are certainly very important. Let me spend a moment on that because when we talked about Rambo just now, I didn’t talk about First Blood – I talked about Rambo, the character.

Nobody even calls those films First Blood and First Blood Part II, do they?
No, no one cares about that! They care about the character and that’s what’s important for us because characters can resonate over a long time, and we can do a lot of nice things for fans. The things that work for us from a licensing perspective is that we want to do licensing that the fans like… So the first thing is you have to have a fandom! You have to have people that like the IP; that like the films we represent. Secondly, you have to have quality manufacturers.

We don’t want to have a lot of stuff out. So frequently we’ll turn down deals that are low quality, or if the fans wouldn’t like it; if they’re inappropriate. We call it “off-brand”. We want things that the fans are going to like. And if it doesn’t work now, then maybe it’ll work in the future. Maybe it’ll never work! We want to make money for our clients, of course, because this is a business. But it’s not a situation where we’ll take any deal just to make money because that’s not the way we look at it. We want these titles to last for a long time and I don’t want the fans to get annoyed and say, “All they’re doing is ripping off fans by putting out Rambo toilet paper” or some sort of crap.

Rambo toilet paper! That doesn’t look like a winner…
No! Ha! That’s an extreme example. But there’s a lot of less extreme ones that I won’t share because I don’t want to insult some of the manufacturers. But we get pitched all the time so we have to have a good fandom, and we have to have a sense of what these films stand for.

And are you personally sitting there, Rand, saying no to ideas? Or do you feel obliged to take everything to your clients and say, “Well, I wouldn’t do this, but look…”?
Well, everything is approved by the people we represent, but we’re the first stop. So we have to be happy with what we’re doing. We don’t want be insulting manufacturers but, likewise, we don’t want to be badgering our clients with stuff that’s just clearly inappropriate.

Badgering – good word.
We also have minimums that we look for on all the deals. We’ve been doing this for so long and, as I said, we have over 200 active licensees. So we pretty much know all the players. If somebody new comes in, we can vet them with the others. So if there’s a new company doing collectible figures and I haven’t heard of them… That’s rare.

Right. Not an insurmountable problem if you haven’t heard of them, though?
No, then I just say, “Let’s find out from the other companies”! Because we deal with the best and they’ll say, “Yeah, these guys came out of X, Y, Z company and they’re really good. So, you know, talk to them.”

But it must not happen very often that you are sort of caught completely off guard by a new player…
Not in the usual categories. I know there are new categories that come up… I’ll give you an example. We’re now looking into the area of energy drinks. Why? Because our characters work well on energy drinks! A lot of our characters are male macho, you know? Testosterone driven. So there’s an element that works for energy drinks.

“We have a certain fandom for these titles – and the fandom drives the products.”

So you’ve offered digital games, figures, models, escape rooms, apparel and now energy drinks. It feels to me that you don’t jump on a bandwagon just because it feels like it’s going to be a thing.
No, because we have a certain fandom for these titles and the fandom drives the products. So we don’t want to insult them by telling them, in effect, “You guys really should be doing something silly!” Or something, more importantly, unproven.

I hear that. So, in that respect, your process is a little bit of an art; you can go on your gut instinct, but a little bit of science – because you’ve been doing it for so long. You know what’s going to work – to some extent?
I think I do. But in fairness, that’s a double-edged sword because I’m older and I’ve been doing this a long time… So I know what works for me, and that means I don’t always look at new things early on because they’re not proven. But I don’t want to put my clients in liability. Sometimes, a new product category can become massively popular and then crash – think of the recent excitement over NFTs

NFTs… Okay. And can you give me an example of something like that, Rand?
Yes, I’ll give you an example of something that’s changed… We do a lot of things in the online gaming business; gambling games. In the UK, it’s perfectly legal and has been for at least 20 years that I’m familiar with. Here in the United States, it wasn’t! Only in the past four or five years has it become legal in certain states. So we would grant deals to manufacturers of gambling games and say, “Hey, you have all legal jurisdictions if and when they become legal, but the United States it’s not legal now.”

Right.
So we were restricting things, and maybe we’re missing the boat by not being the first one out. But I don’t want to be out there in something that’s questionable from a legal perspective. As it opens up, you know, New Jersey becomes legal, or other states: yes, that’s fine. But my state, California, isn’t legal for online gaming, so we can’t allow anyone to do that.

But to some extent, with the kind of titles you offer, you’re not really missing a trick… You’re just waiting for the right time. Now, one of the films you mentioned earlier was Terminator… This is seminal cinema!
Right! It’s just part of the world now. So much so that Terminator expressions and soundbites appear all the time: “I’ll be back”… And now with, you know, AI and robotics, it’s coming up even more.

Well, I don’t know whether readers will be horrified or delighted to learn that 2024 is the 40th anniversary of Terminator…
Yes! So StudioCanal is sponsoring a 40th anniversary for the franchise, which really, for us, is the first two films.

Just the first two?
Yes, because – with respect to everything that followed – it was the first two films that counted. So we’re celebrating the 40th anniversary of Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day in October of 2024.

And I can’t imagine you can tell us anything about those plans yet?!
No, but you can ask me again at BLE!

Ha! Done. Another one that caught me off guard was The Wicker Man being 50 this year. That’s much more of a cult hit…
It’s a UK cult hit.

It’s not big in America?
Not nearly as big… I’ll give you another one. Zulu.

Okay. And that’s what? 60 next year?
Yes. Zulu was a film that was, to my recollection, shown every Christmastime for years in the UK… Now, not so much. Two things happened with Zulu. One is that it’s not so popular, really, outside the UK. And two, the worldview on British colonialism has changed.

Yes, I can imagine people being a bit wary of that these days. Whereas a film about, you know, sacrificing a virgin in a giant wicker statue… That’s timeless.
Ha! Exactly!

People are over that like a rash…
You have to travel to the outer islands to get them anyway, so who cares?
But at the other end of the spectrum, you know, we also have Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure… That’s worked brilliantly for us because there we have two characters that people can relate to. Not horror, not really action.

And picking up on something you said earlier, Rand, how do you view some of the sequels to things that are, perhaps, more for the fans? Because, with Star Wars – I’ll use that by way of example, because they’re not in your catalogue… With Star Wars, the first one was groundbreaking. The second was superb. The third was okay… But the rest of the franchise is very hit and miss. So I’m wondering how you tap into the fandom, because I don’t think the fandom for the original Star Wars would necessarily be a fandom for The Phantom Menace…
So we look at sequels as wonderful marketing and publicity. But the fans, our customers, they want the originals. And we’re lucky that we have two franchises, Rambo and Terminator, where the original films were really good. Terminator is a perfect example. Actually, I’ll ask you: which of the Terminator films do you like better?

I rated the first, I loved the second.
Do you know why?

I think I preferred to see Schwarzenegger as a good guy. And I think they played with the conventions more because Terminator broke enough ground to let the sequel play against your expectations a little bit more. Which is not to take anything away from the original because Terminator is just a great, great movie.
See, I find the first movie is a better story. I think putting Sarah Connor – a waitress – in the gravest danger, and having her then turn out to be the hero is really a good story. It worked really well.

You’re absolutely right, and perhaps that’s the strength of the first two: neither film put a foot wrong. They’re almost flawless – and that, perhaps, is why the fandom rates those films so much. More than rates them… Loves them!
So Deej, you’re now proving my point! Why are these movies worth reviewing licensing and talking about? Because we love them! And you can talk at any bar or any, you know – afternoon tea – and everyone’s gonna know what you’re talking about.

Ha! I like that you realized as you spoke, Rand, that I would more likely be having afternoon tea than sitting in a bar. Very astute!
Ha!

And since we’re using the word love, are there any titles you look at and think, gosh, that really should get more love?
There are. I think Highlander deserves more love. I think it’s a not the greatest movie but it had a really good premise. And maybe it’s too old, but a really good movie is The Graduate, but that’s a different kind of movie; it’s a softer movie.

So, let me ask you this: if somebody wants to come and pitch an idea to you, what are their ‘must have’ things? What boxes must they tick before they reach out to you?
Well, first off, they have to be in business, right? We’re not looking for someone to come to us and say, “Hey, I’d like to start a business making licensed cow’s milk…” or something.

Damn it, Rand… You’ve quashed my idea; I was going to pitch you Milk Maid in Manhattan…
So close!

It’s slipping through our fingers…
Ah, curse! Another one bites the dust!

“You may make a really good product… But do you make products that’re right for our sort of fans?”

Okay. So it has to be up and running. What else?
We also need you to be successful and have proven that you know what you’re doing. It’s not so much making the product; it’s selling, marketing it the right way and marketing to where the fans are. Then I’d like to see some of the success you’ve had in licensing. You may have a really good business making a product. But have you made a product that’s right for our sort of fans?

Can you give me an example of that?
Sure! We’ve been asked to represent new-release comedies and new-release dramas, TV shows. But that’s not us… It’s not our business because the manufacturers who do that are interested in another thing. They want to be out there when the film or TV show is out; they want take that advantage of it. Then they want to move on to the next show, and move on. That’s a different business than the one we have in our licenses.

It’s a short-term plan. Whereas if the licensee is coming to you…
If the licensee is coming to me, I need to know what they’re doing for the long term… I had Universal Studios as my licensee for 27 years. That was on Bill & Ted. So we’re into long-term situations.

That’s incredible. Alright, so they have to be in business, they have to have a proven success record…
They have to have marketing, sales, distribution. Then they have to have the idea! Why are you going to be better at wherever this idea is than anybody else? What’s your advantage? What are you doing that makes sense that no one else has seen or can do?

But not necessarily cheaper?
No, not necessarily cheaper. Because I don’t like cheap products. I want good products. I’d rather have the fans strive a little more to get something of quality than to have a lot of stuff that they throw into the bottom of the drawer. So yes, I want to make sure you’re out there, what your idea is and what’s going on – then we can talk about it.

Anything else?
Lastly, is it protectable? In other words, is there a copyright, trademark or patent or name or logo or something that makes it branded? Funko is a great example. There’s been other people that did that sort of vinyl toy before, but Funko put their brand on it and they gave it a certain look. That really worked. Beanie Babies is another one.

Brilliant. Well, Rand… This has been a joy. We need to wrap it up, but I’m going to ask you two questions to finish off. First, what’s the one question I could have asked you today but didn’t?
Hmmm… Why aren’t there more people doing this?

That’s a bloody good question! So question two: Why aren’t there more people doing this?
Because it’s not easy! It sounds like it would be, but it’s not just the process of saying, I represent X, Y, Z… It’s knowing the relationship. This is really a relationship business and we’re built on years and years of dealing with people and dealing with manufacturers; knowing what they want and making a success so we can go to the next project with them. We very, very often have the same licensees doing multiple things for us.

Similar products for different licences?
Yes. They’ll do Escape from New York, they’ll do Evil Dead; they’ll do Terminator, they’ll do Rambo, they’ll do Bill & Ted – because we have that relationship. So that’s one. The other is that there aren’t that many high-quality films of the kind that we represent. There ARE some others. I’ll give you an example… There’s some women’s films that we’d love to do, like Bridget Jones. I think there’s a huge amount to be done with Bridget Jones, but the rights aren’t available.

Not until this article goes live… Then those people will be beating down your door!
I’ll count on it! So yes… Our titles don’t have to be male-testosterone driven, but they do have to have a character. So that’s one reason there aren’t more people doing it. Also, the studios have libraries but they’re pushed to deal with maximizing revenue for the new releases. And they use the marketing and promotion of the licenses to help that.

We’re not focused like that. We’re focused on long-term income. And the other part of that is this: I don’t get a salary! Studio people get a salary. I get a percent… in effect, we’re an agent. We represent movies. We succeed when they succeed. So our goal is to be, long-term, successful for everybody.
That’s another reason why we’re different.

Brilliant. Listen, my friend, that was an absolute pleasure! Thank you again, Rand, for making time. I’ll be sure to catch up with you at BLE and get more news! Thanks again.