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A multimedia franchise (or a transmedia franchise) is a media franchise for which installments exist in multiple forms of media, such as books, comics, films, television series, and video games. Multimedia franchises usually develop due to the popularization of an original creative work, and then its expansion to other media through licensing agreements, with respect to intellectual property in the franchise's characters and settings, although the trend later developed wherein franchises would be launched in multiple forms of media simultaneously.

In order to qualify for this list, a franchise must have works in at least three forms of media, and must have two or more separate works in at least two of those forms of media (a television series or comic book series is considered a single work for purposes of this list; multiple spin-off series or reboots of a previously ended series are considered multiple works). For example, a television series that spawned one film and one novelization would not qualify; a television series that had a spin-off series, or was remade as a new series, and which spawned two films and one novelization does qualify. This list does not include public domain works from which adaptations have been made in multiple media, but which do not involve licensing or other means by which an author or owner controls the franchise. A franchise may be included if it obtained multimedia franchise status prior to works within the collection entering the public domain.

Note: In the following table, the initial media through which the franchise characters or settings became known is shown in boldface. Only works of fiction are only considered part of the series; a book or a documentary film about the franchise is not itself an installment in the franchise.

Franchises originating in literary works

Franchises originating in comics and printed cartoons

Franchises originating in television series

Franchises originating in films

Franchises originating in animated films

Franchises originating in live-action films

Franchises originating in video games

Including film and/or television works

Not including film and/or television works

Franchises originating in board games, card games, table-top games, and role-playing games

Franchises originating in toys, attractions and other media

See also

• List of fictional shared universes in film and television – many multimedia franchises are based in fictional universes
• List of public domain works with multimedia adaptations
• List of highest-grossing media franchises
• Media mix

References

1. See, e.g., Barry Langford, Post-classical Hollywood: Film Industry, Style and Ideology Since 1945, p. 207, ISBN 074863858X: "For the studios, a home-run is a film from which a multimedia 'franchise' can be generated; the colossally expensive creation of cross-media conglomerates predicated on synergistic rewards provides an obvious imperative to develop such products".
2. ^ Harry J. Brown, Videogames and Education (2008), p. 41, ISBN 0765629496:

   In one of the most celebrated ventures in media convergence, Larry and Andy Wachowski, creators of The Matrix trilogy, produced the game Enter the Matrix (2003) simultaneously with the last two films of the trilogy, shooting scenes for the game on the movie's sets with the movie s actors, and releasing the game on the same day as The Matrix: Reloaded. Likewise, on September 21, 2004, Lucasfilm jointly released a new DVD box set of the original Star Wars trilogy with Star Wars: Battlefront, a combat game in which players can reenact battles from all six Star Wars films. In 2005, Peter Jackson likewise produced his blockbuster film King Kong (2005) in tandem with a successful King Kong game designed by Michael Ancel and published by Ubisoft. In the last several years, numerous licensed videogame adaptations of major summer and holiday blockbusters were released a few days before or a few days after their respective films, including: all three Star Wars films (1999–2005); all five Harry Potter films (2001–2008); all three Spider-Man films (2002–2007); Hulk (2002); The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002); The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003); The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005); Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006); Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007); and Transformers (2007). These multimedia franchises have made it more difficult to distinguish the production of films and videogames as separate enterprises.

3. ^ Cite error: The named reference avp was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
4. Note: The Ghostbusters franchise beginning with the 1984 film is unrelated to the 1975 TV series, The Ghost Busters, and its spin-off, the 1986 Ghostbusters animated series.
5. Lincoln Geraghty, American Science Fiction Film and Television (2009), p. 94, ISBN 1845207963: Multiple readings of the film are plentiful and highlight the polysemic nature of the text and subsequent multimedia franchise".
6. Roger Parry, The Ascent of Media: From Gilgamesh to Google Via Gutenberg (2011), p. 317, ISBN 1857885708: "Along with associated feature films, comic books, and character merchandise, Mario has become a hugely valuable global multimedia franchise".
7. Marc DiPaolo, War, Politics and Superheroes: Ethics and Propaganda in Comics and Film (2011), p. 39, ISBN 0786485795: "The multimedia franchise is bolstered by the imaginations of the Transformers fans that imbue the flimsy material with their own potent fantasies of family cars and household devices turning into robots".

• Mass media franchises
• Cultural lists