The world of animation is quite limitless, literally, as you can pretty much make anything you want in ways that real life often can’t imitate. And what better way to showcase this endless possibility than crossing it over into the NFT market, which is exactly what Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher have done with their new NFT-only animation called Stoner Cats.

If the term “NFT-only animation” sounds quite alien to you, don’t worry, it’s kind of a groundbreaking concept, believe it or not, though there’s a lot of overlap with subscription packages you’re already familiar with and use on a daily basis. Think about paying for HBO Max to watch Game of Thrones or Netflix and you’ll have a pretty solid idea of where this is all going. NFT-only media means that you have to be an owner of the corresponding NFT token in order to get access to the content, just like how those other aforementioned services require a subscription. 

The idea is to create exclusivity while also, paradoxically, providing a large platform from which to view content.  People love watching television and movies, which is why they pay for stuff like Netflix, so it stands to reason that these NFTs could see similar success.

Which brings us to Stoner Cats, the story about an old woman named Ms. Stoner, who lives alone with her two cats and has to take medical marijuana for her Alzheimer’s condition. This, of course, leads to a lot of wacky situations in which her cats start to get high off of the marijuana, leading to them hallucinating and doing all kinds of other hijinks, like saving their clumsy owner from peril on a daily basis. A story any cat-owner will likely find unbelievable, as cats are often the ones creating the messy situation. 

The show backs some impressive star power with the likes of Seth MacFarlane and Chris Rock, enticing fans of those respective creators’ works into even more hype. There were 10,000 NFT tokens, selling at $800 each, and sold out in less than an hour, resulting in a total sale of $8.4 million. Each NFT token is a lifetime pass, meaning once you have it, you can watch the show forever.  

The potential here is huge, given that earlier in the year, big time creators like Dan Harmon made the first blockchain TV series ever. And with the huge success of things like Disney Plus hitting over 100 million subscribers in less than a year, subscription-based streaming services are bigger than ever, partly due to the effects that the pandemic had on forcing everyone to stay home and watch TV. We are bound to see other NFT-only TV series crop up in the future and maybe an NFT Netflix one day might come about. It’s hard to know what the future holds, but it’s an exciting one for sure for both NFT enthusiasts and TV lovers.