Here’s the story of another man named Brady.
The Hollywood Reporter revealed on its web site yesterday that Vince Vaughn will be Executive Producer of a situation comedy based on The Brady Bunch. The sitcom will feature Bobby Brady as a once-divorced father married to a divorced woman with children. Bobby and his new wife will also have a child together.
CBS gave a script commitment to Vaughn’s Wild West Picture Show production company. It’s all in the family. CBS Television Studios owns the rights to The Brady Bunch because of a merger that transitioned the rights from Paramount Television.
A cultural touchstone for Generation Xers, like yours truly, that feasted on reruns of during the pre-dinner time period, The Brady Bunch has been the gift that keeps on giving for Paramount and, presently, CBS Television Studios. The Brady Bunch has enjoyed success in reruns, situation comedies, television drama, documentaries, movies, tv-movies, books, reality television, theatre, music, and merchandise.
If CBS gives the show a green light for broadcast, then a revival of these ventures is possible, if not damn likely. A bible is warranted, not the kind with fire and brimstone, but the kind with dates and a rights matrix. Bradypedia.
Every media property has a history. More history means more revenue potential. But it also means more information to sort through. Publicists, marketers, and attorneys need to be armed with the knowledge of the property. Why? Read the second sentence of this paragraph again, the one that mentions history being correlative to revenue.
For example, The Brady Bunch had two episodes with a football theme. In Click, Greg Brady becomes a member of the Westdale High School football theme. After an injury during a scrimmage sidelines Greg, he takes photographs of the team playing. His photography skills would get applause from Felix Unger. After several blowups, Greg finds that a referee blew a big call.
In Quarterback Sneak, rival quarterback Jerry Rogers of Fairview High School dates Marcia Brady so he can get into the Brady abode and steal Greg’s playbook. Greg uncovers Rogers’s scheme, forges plays, and Rogers suffers. Rogers fails to take Greg’s warning about the fake playbook, Westdale clobbers Fairview, and the Fairview coach benches Rogers after discovering the quarterback’s scheme.
Packaging these episodes is a potential revenue opportunity in a football-themed Brady Bunch DVD or a special broadcast for The Hub, Antenna TV, or Me TV. But it first requires knowledge best acquired via a compendium that is organized, detailed, and easy to read.
Mom always said, “Don’t play ball in the house. Compile your corporate history instead.”
You can even multitask by doing it during dinner. I heard that pork chops and apple sauce is a nice dinner combination.