Plans for Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT Short Film Trilogy paused by Coinbase

Bitcoin exchanges existed prior to the establishment of their NFT marketplace. During this year's Bored Ape Yacht Club frenzy, Coinbase published a trilogy of short videos based on the NFT initiative. According to Decrypt, the corporation has chosen to halt future production of the series after releasing the first book in the series in July.

"We are continually refining our content strategy and have opted to suspend production on the remaining two films as we discover the best creative path forward," a Coinbase spokeswoman said. "We will continue to prioritize more urgent creative pursuits."

The spokesman opted not to provide any more information on the reasons for the production halt.

The Degen Trilogy, produced by Yuga Labs, founder of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, was intended to incorporate a diverse cast of characters created by the numerous Bored Ape owners. Coinbase has agreed to pay $10,000 in Bitcoin or ApeCoin to the owners of each chosen ape for the pleasure of licensing their apes for inclusion in the movie.

The first episode, a five-minute computer-animated short released in July via social media and YouTube, features human actors on an ApeCoin-themed quest in a tower full of "money zombies." The Bored Ape made brief and sporadic appearances.

The NFT community panned it, citing the convoluted plot, drawn-out credits, and lack of Bored Ape Yacht Club allusions in the first chapter.

The video was released in June, just after Coinbase lay off over 1,100 employees. "Imagine being let off by Coinbase because they couldn't afford to pay you, and then they come out with this," a user called Hawkward, who makes NFT art under a pseudonym, tweeted.

Between the announcement in April and the debut in July, much had transpired, not only the reduction in employee size.

Even after several months, the problem has not improved. Despite attempts to calm the market, monthly NFT sales continue to plummet, Bored Ape prices have just dipped below $60,000 (from a peak of $429,000 worth of ETH in April), and Coinbase's stock price has fallen to all-time lows.

Since its April inception, Coinbase's NFT market has witnessed only $7 million in trade volume. That is much less than what the leading marketplace OpenSea does in a single day. Surojit Chatterjee, the company's chief product officer, oversaw the marketplace's debut, but he resigned in November, shortly before additional layoffs were announced.

Chatterjee stated in an August conversation with author Laura Shin for the Unchained podcast that the first book in the Degen Trilogy "probably didn't grasp the message" for "some folks." He went on to suggest that certain things are more successful than others, using Coinbase's well-known Super Bowl commercial as an example.

Despite the recent downturn in the value of Ethereum assets, the Bored Ape Yacht Club has remained one of the most visible and extensively embraced NFT projects to date, with over $2.5 billion in total transaction volume since its launch in April 2021. Yuga Labs has added many new NFT collections, including property deeds for the upcoming metaverse game Otherside.

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