Last week’s date night found my wife and I venturing off to the movies sans kids to view ‘Won’t You Be My Neighbor’ — a movie that examines the life and legacy of Fred Rogers, the beloved host of the popular children’s TV show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
Seeing we don’t watch much TV around the House of Brown, I didn’t realize ‘Won’t You Be My Neighbor’ was a movie until my wife mentioned it to me after we stumbled upon a Behind-The-Scenes Special chronicling the journey of Rogers.
A few weeks passed and up popped an date night invite to the movies. As we waited for ‘Won’t You Be My Neighbor’ to begin, a number of movie trailers played one after the next.
As they played, I noticed it had been years since I had been in a movie theater. It was interesting to discover how movies of today are being advertised in their use of #hashtags and social media usage — advertising Twitter, Instagram and Facebook handles.
Of course, there were a number of movies advertising matching or near matching .com domains that included movie title and the word “movie” in it.
Being I love and am held captive by domains more than the average person, two distinct movies stood out to many out of likely 10-15 or so that rolled this night: ‘The King’ and ‘Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot’.
What’s funny is that I couldn’t tell you the premise of either movie outside of surface detail, but what I did remember is both using new top-level domains (new TLDs) to represent their respective movie.
‘The King’, the film
In short, ‘The King’ is a 2-hour documentary that takes a music road trip across the United States in Elvis Presley’s 1963 Rolls Royce during the 2016 presidential election, comparing Elvis’ transition from country boy to “The King” to America’s transformation into an empire.
Having recently debuted, it has a cast of recognizable faces to boot, sharing their own insights about the parallels of Elvis and America.
Nevertheless, what stuck out the most to me was when the movie cut to the release date, which was a black ground with white text, screen and displayed the website address as TheKing.Film.
Although .com is the “King” fo web addresses and has been since the birth of the Internet, it’s interesting to be in the midst of the tide slowly beginning to change.
Of course, we’ve not turned the corner nor have scratched the surface, but give it a decade or so, and my belief is that more and more films coming to the screen will either .film and .movie domains.
Oh, and I did check the availability of TheKingFilm.com, and it was registered and resolving to a GoDaddy parked page.
No need to worry, it’s only .movie
Speaking of .movie, it wasn’t but one or two movie trailers later that I spotted an Amazon Studios drama/biography movie based on a true story of how a guy nearly dying in a car accident journeys to give up alcohol: ‘Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot’.
This 2-hour film chronicles the journey from accident to rehab to discovering a knack for drawing to gaining a national and devoted following to his newspaper cartoons.
But once again, what I remembered first and foremost, was that the web presence of the movie itself using a .movie url: DontWorry.Movie.
And like ‘The King’, I did check the availability of DontWorryMovie.com, and it was registered and not resolving.
Final Thoughts about .Film and .Movie
Whether in the theater or out and about throughout my day, I’m seeing more and more business and personal brands confidently developing new TLDs as their digital presence — even when the matching .com is available.
I can’t say with great clarity of the time and place that new TLDs will overtake legacy domains, but it will happen — slowly, but surely it will happen.
From within the movie theaters to the streets, both .film and .movie extensions are being embraced by a longstanding industry and emerging professionals on the cusp to take film and movie to their next destination in this lifelong journey.
As for domain investors, be cautioned and forewarned when investing in new TLDs. The same rules applied to legacy extensions are nowhere near the ballpark of being or delivering similar results, if any results delivered at all.
Don’t go stockpile new TLDs in hopes of striking it rich, because you may go broke and fast too! As I mentioned earlier, it may take another decade or more for new TLDs to truly become mainstream or preferred option over legacy domains.
Nevertheless, I hat tip the early adopters who will rise head and shoulders above the rest when the time comes for new TLDs should that opportunity be around the next bend.
That’s all for now!