It started with a Lego set. A fan submission through the Lego Ideas platform — Mulder's office, a hovering UFO, eight minifigures, a short film starring Gillian Anderson — and suddenly the Fox catalog felt alive again. But one great product doesn't mean a vault is being fully unlocked, and that tension is exactly what this episode is about.

David Born takes a close look at Disney in 2026: the world's largest licensor, the company that absorbed Fox for $71.3 billion, and the licensing machine behind Mickey, Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar — and an enormous pipeline that stretches all the way to Mickey's 100th anniversary in 2028.

From the Golden Girls pop-up restaurant touring US cities, to a ten-brand strategic alliance with Kraft Heinz spanning theme parks, cruise lines and streaming content, to a Champion x NFL x Disney collection revealed through a live fan draft at Fanatics Fest — David breaks down how Disney is inserting its IP into fandoms that have nothing to do with animation, and what that says about where licensing is heading.

The box office picture is more mixed: Toy Story 5 and The Devil Wears Prada 2 overperformed, Hoppers proved original Pixar IP can still land, but The Mandalorian and Grogu and the live-action Moana both fell short. The lesson, as David puts it: even the biggest studio on the planet doesn't get a guaranteed win just by putting a familiar name on the poster.

Looking ahead — Spider-Man, Avengers Doomsday, The Simpsons Movie 2, Frozen 3, and a 2027 Star Wars lineup built around the franchise's 50th anniversary. Every one of these is a licensing event as much as a box office one.

And the Fox catalog? Still full of gold. Still largely untapped. That's the open question this episode ends on.

Topics covered:

• The Lego x X-Files set: fan-originated, Disney-approved, and what it reveals about an underleveraged vault
• Why the Disney–Fox acquisition is now Exhibit A in the Paramount–WBD antitrust fight
• Disney's Icons Unleashed presentation at Licensing Expo 2026
• The Golden Girls pop-up restaurant: how a legacy property stays culturally relevant
• Kraft Heinz x Disney: when licensing becomes full brand infrastructure
• Disney x Champion x NFL: 32 teams, four franchises, one live fan draft
• Minnie and Daisy in F1 Academy, and Mickey in an original Formula One comics series
• Box office wins and misses in 2026 — and what's still to come
• Mickey's 100th anniversary in 2028: Disney's once-in-a-generation moment

🎙 Born to License – Hosted by David Born

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No script. No studio. David Born drove from LA to San Diego, spent a full day on the floor of Comic-Con 2026, and brought a microphone along for the ride.

130,000 pop culture fans under one roof — and if you work in licensing, this is your customer base in full force. This episode is a front-row seat to what the industry looks like when it's working: people who plan their entire summer vacation around a convention, queue around the block to get merchandise signed, and spend nine months hand-building a cosplay outfit from scratch.

David visits the Keepsake booth — a Born Licensing client — where lines were wrapping around multiple corners for their Invincible and Walking Dead exclusives. He sits down with Adam from Keepsake on the floor, gets a candid look at what it actually takes to manage a trading card licensing program (hundreds of approval submissions per product cycle), and catches up with licensing attorney David Schneider from Nolan Heiman for a legal read on the day's biggest trend: the unstoppable rise of anime and the growing market for micro-targeted, niche properties sold in small runs direct to a passionate audience.

Along the way: Tom Kenny (the voice of SpongeBob) signing autographs, Pokémon celebrating 30 years and $100 billion in retail sales, Grogu at the Star Wars booth ahead of what David calls the franchise's biggest year in a decade, and a dark Joker-meets-Ronald McDonald outfit that genuinely stopped the floor.

The episode closes with a look ahead — the Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery merger extended to at least June 2027, a major new Kraft Heinz x Disney partnership across theme parks, cruise lines and ten brands, and a Lego x X-Files range starring Gillian Anderson.

Topics covered:

• What Comic-Con looks like through a licensing professional's eyes — and why it matters
• Inside the Keepsake booth: Invincible, Walking Dead exclusives, and the signing lines that wrapped the floor
• The reality of trading card licensing: hundreds of approval submissions per product
• The rise of anime and niche micro-targeting: how small-run products find passionate audiences through social media
• Pokémon at 30: $100 billion in retail sales from a single property
• Star Wars, Avengers Doomsday, and which franchises are betting big on Comic-Con 2026
• News: Paramount–WBD merger timeline, Kraft Heinz x Disney, and Lego x X-Files

🎙 Born to License – Hosted by David Born

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Buried in paragraph 98 of a federal antitrust complaint is one of the strongest arguments anyone has made about the true value of the licensing industry - and it wasn't written by a licensing executive, a trade publication, or a keynote speaker at Licensing Expo. It was written by state attorneys general trying to block a $110 billion Hollywood merger.

In this episode, David Born unpacks what 12 states suing to block the Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery deal actually reveals about how licensing underwrites the biggest films in the world — and why the industry has been telling its own story the wrong way around.

The conventional narrative says licensing follows a box office hit. The states' argument says the opposite: licensing infrastructure is part of what makes a tentpole film financeable in the first place. David backs that up with three examples that each flip the usual order — AMC's collectible popcorn buckets driving ticket sales, Bluey's licensing earnings rising as BBC Studios cut content spend, and Pop Mart building a Sony feature film off the back of a merchandise program that started with a picture book illustration.

Plus: the Comet x Uno collaboration that sold out in minutes, two Licensing Awards nominations for the Born Licensing team, and David's take on Hollywood vs. AI at the box office.

Topics covered:

• The Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery merger: where the legal fight stands and what's at stake
• The antitrust paragraph every licensing professional should read — and what it actually says
• Why licensing isn't just downstream of box office success — in some cases, it's what makes the box office possible
• AMC's collectible buckets: when merchandise becomes a reason to buy a ticket, not a reward for buying one
• Bluey and BBC Studios: how licensing earnings rose while content investment fell
• Pop Mart: the licensing program that came first and is now funding the film
• ABG's Care Bears acquisition — and what the CEO said he was actually buying
• Born Licensing's two Licensing Awards nominations

🧠 Key Insight:

Licensing isn’t just a revenue stream. It’s part of the financial engine that makes modern entertainment possible.

🎙 Born to License – Hosted by David Born

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