It’s a kind of Magic 🧝✨

It’s time to ditch the Easter bunny ears and don your best robes and armour, because 2023 is fast becoming a nerdy fantasy delight! 🛡️

Dungeons and Dragons, the tabletop role playing game owned by Hasbro (HAS), has moved from the board to the big screen and the reviews are hot! Not even John Wick could slay the opening weekend of Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Amongst Thieves, which was released with Paramount (PARAA, PARA) taking home almost US$40 million. 📽️

Hasbro also owns one of the most popular fantasy trading card games of all time, Magic: The Gathering, which turns the big 3-0 this year. But rather than being just another Millennial nostalgia fad, Hasbro says the brand’s magic is stronger than ever. In fact, last year Magic: The Gathering became Hasbro’s first billion-dollar brand, a feat not even Peppa Pig has been able to pull off! 🐷

Still, some Wall Street analysts have questioned whether Hasbro’s aggressive printing of cards could kill the magic by making trading cards too common - a fact Hasbro probably hasn’t helped as they brag about reprinting the same set of cards three times due to strong demand. Awkward. 😬 All that magic also hasn’t been able to rescue Hasbro’s share price, down 38% over the last year. 

There may be some big money to be conjured up in the fantasy genre if companies can get it right, however. In February, when Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) released Hogwarts Legacy, the video game raked in an estimated US$850 million in its first two weeks, while gamers were busy casting over 100 billion ‘Revelio’ spells. ✨

One does not simply ignore that kind of moola, something which The Lord of The Rings franchise might be hoping for when they release their own video game next month, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, closely followed by one of the most anticipated fantasy game releases of 2023, Blizzard Activision’s (ATVI) Diablo 4, set for release in June. Game on, fantasy fans! 🎮

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