'It's fun to be the old guy': Sir Anthony Hopkins launches NFT collection
Hollywood icon Sir Anthony Hopkins and NFT creative media company Orange Comet are launching an NFT collection influenced by characters the actor has portrayed in films throughout his career as well as his own artwork.
Hopkins says NFTs piqued his interest after he released his film, Zero Contact, last year exclusively as an NFT.
“NFTs for me are a blank canvas to create art in a new format,” Hopkins told reporters this week. “I was nervous at first when I did it because I thought well, I have the same nerves as vanity. It's okay to have anticipation nerves, but you gotta get on with it.”
Hopkins added: “My message is, it's fun to be the old guy on the block because I'm interested in and fascinated by young people. A young generation is totally different to me, everyone seems younger than me now. But inspiration is reciprocal. So I hope to also return some inspiration to people by saying that everything is possible. Give it a whirl, have a go.”
The NFT collection, called The Eternal Collection, is comprised of ten archetypes based on psychological attitudes of human personalities, including the giver, the hero, the lover, the creator, and the rebel.
The last, Hopkins’ favorite, is inspired by one of the most famous characters he played, Hannibal Lecter.
Other NFTs in the collection are inspired by Hopkins’ paintings and are re-simulations. Each will be an animated short narrative stories ranging from 30 seconds to a minute – with 100 variants of each.
“We asked ourselves, how do we marry his art that he's done, the vibrancy, along with the kinds of archetypes of characters that Hopkins has played over the years,” says Orange Comet CEO Dave Broome.
Hopkins’ NFTs come to market at a time when NFT values and the crypto market remain down substantially from all-time highs reached last year.
For the first time, in the second quarter trading activity in the NFT market became unprofitable, according to second-quarter report from NonFungible.
But Broome argues the market is craving high-quality projects.
“These are high pedigree projects, and opportunities that will always sustain no matter what, and that's what we expect here,” said Broome. “We think it's great timing actually because of the appetite for something of this high fidelity with this kind of an iconic talent. This is about IP, art and brands, and taking Hopkins as a both an artist and a brand to the world.”
The NFT collection is set to launch in mid-September and will be available on OpenSea.
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