On April 11th, Coinbase announced that it will be producing a three-part movie series featuring the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), the most valuable non-fungible token community to date. The movie trilogy, which it dubs the Degen trilogy, will premiere in June at NFT.NYC, the fourth annual industry event in New York City.

The announcement doubled as a casting call for owners to submit their Bored Apes for consideration to be part of the movie series, and for MAYC, another collection holders, to submit their Mutant Apes for part two of the series. Those selected for the project will earn a licensing fee of $10,000 worth of Bitcoin or Apecoin.

This is made possible by the Bored Ape Yacht Club’s policy, which gives owners full commercialization rights to their ape with no restriction to merchandise or monetary cap in gross revenue each year, a perk which produced a number of projects including the band Kingship, a band made entirely of four Bored Apes under McNelis and Universal Music Group’s label, Ape-In-Productions, a metaverse entertainment company by Timberland and Jenkins the Valet, an anonymous writing collective signed by talent agency CAA.

“Coinbase is committed to providing creative events that reward and connect with our communities through projects that bring the ethos of Web3 to life: collaboration, transparency, and opportunity,” said Coinbase on the Degen Trilogy website. “For this project, we are celebrating one of the most iconic NFT communities by opening up participation to everyone. As the project unfolds, more communities will be celebrated and included.”

The film trilogy announcement follows the launch of the Apecoin (APE) token by the BAYC community on March 18th which will also feature in the trilogy, the acquisition of rival blue-chip project CryptoPunks by BAYC’s parent company, Yuga Labs, and the release of a reveal trailer for a BAYC game.

A crowdsourced monolith with sweepstakes, story drops and easter eggs planned out, the exchange is also using the movie trilogy to promote its new marketplace. “We wanted to find a way to celebrate the NFT space and really the utility of NFTs, and make it a cross-over project that brings new people into the fold,” says William Swann, Coinbase’s entertainment and culture marketing director.

Once released, the movie will be available on the microsite for Coinbase wallet holders and will feature frequent updates throughout the year-long development, including the ability for users to vote on their favourite ape storyline to collectively build the ape adventure.