Six Media, One Blueprint: Franchises in Order of Origin

James Bond began not on screen but on the page: Ian Fleming introduced the fictional British intelligence officer in his 1953 novel Casino Royale, nine years before Eon Productions opened the film series with Dr. No in 1962. The role has since been played across the decades by Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig, making the film series one of the longest continuously running in history.

J. R. R. Tolkien published The Lord of the Rings in three volumes between 1954 and 1955, continuing the invented world of Middle-earth he had introduced in his earlier book The Hobbit. Peter Jackson's film trilogy, shot simultaneously in New Zealand and released between 2001 and 2003, did not arrive until nearly half a century later, and its final installment, The Return of the King, won a combined seventeen Academy Awards.

Doctor Who began as a BBC television series in 1963, following an alien Time Lord who travels through time in a ship called the TARDIS. The series introduced regeneration, a device letting the lead role pass to a new actor, which has let more than a dozen performers take on the part across an original run from 1963 to 1989 and a revival that began in 2005 under Russell T Davies.

Star Trek began as a television series created by Gene Roddenberry, following the starship USS Enterprise under the United Federation of Planets when it aired from 1966 to 1969. Canceled after three seasons, it found a much larger audience in syndicated reruns and grew into further series including The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager plus thirteen feature films released since 1979.

Star Wars began as a single film, released in 1977 and later retitled Star Wars: Episode IV, A New Hope, created by George Lucas. It grew into three film trilogies plus standalone films and television series including The Mandalorian and Andor, and Lucasfilm, now owned by The Walt Disney Company, oversees a franchise whose films alone have grossed more than 10 billion dollars worldwide.

Dragon Ball began as a manga series by Akira Toriyama, serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1984 to 1995 and following Son Goku from childhood through adulthood. Its roughly 42 collected volumes have sold more than 260 million copies worldwide, and its anime adaptations, led by Dragon Ball Z, are widely credited with introducing many Western audiences to anime during television syndication in the 1990s and 2000s.

Super Mario began as a video game character created by Shigeru Miyamoto for Nintendo, who first appeared as the player character of the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong before headlining his own platform series with Super Mario Bros. in 1985. Mario has since appeared across genres including the Mario Kart racing series and the Super Smash Bros. crossover fighting series.

The Legend of Zelda began as a 1986 video game created by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka, sending a recurring hero named Link across the kingdom of Hyrule to rescue Princess Zelda. Later installments, including Ocarina of Time in 1998 and Breath of the Wild in 2017, are each widely cited for reshaping action adventure and open world game design in their own eras.

Jurassic Park's franchise dates its start to Steven Spielberg's 1993 film, adapted from Michael Crichton's 1990 novel of the same name. The original film's photorealistic computer generated dinosaurs, combined with practical animatronics, marked a turning point in visual effects filmmaking, and the franchise has since grown to six films spanning the original trilogy and the later Jurassic World trilogy.

Harry Potter began as a novel, the first of seven fantasy books J. K. Rowling published between 1997 and 2007 following an orphaned wizard through his education at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Warner Bros. adapted the novels into an eight film series released between 2001 and 2011, and the books themselves have sold more than 600 million copies worldwide.

The Matrix began as a single film in 1999, written and directed by the Wachowskis, following a computer programmer named Neo who discovers his world is a simulated reality. Its bullet time visual effect, in which the camera appears to move around action frozen in time, became one of the most imitated techniques in film and advertising of its era, before two sequels followed in 2003.

Naruto began as a manga series by Masashi Kishimoto, serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1999 to 2014 and following a young ninja who hosts a powerful fox spirit sealed within him at birth. Its 72 collected volumes have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide, and its anime adaptations, Naruto and Naruto: Shippuden, together ran to more than 700 episodes.