La Femme Nikita - Merchandising - Series Merchandise

Series Merchandise

According to Christopher Heyn, "To many long-time viewers, La Femme Nikita had always been a natural for merchandising. Besides the usual array of T-shirts, jackets, coffee mugs, posters and other trinkets, the action content of the series lends itself perfectly to the development of video games, comic books, toys and action figures. Yet, during the entire run of the series, Warner Bros. released only one piece of merchandise — the soundtrack CD on TVT Records. Beyond that, there was nothing. This frustrated Rod Perth to no end" (20). Heyn quotes Perth as saying: "'Warner Bros. never had an interest in this show ...'" (20). Nevertheless, Heyn reports, he himself "successfully brokered an official merchandising agreement between the Specialty Products division, a vendor in Toronto that already produced merchandise for the series' cast and crew, and the Sidekicks Society, the organizers of Close Quarters Standby 2", the second in a series of four La Femme Nikita fan conventions held in Toronto in October 1999 (Heyn 20). Such items included jackets, T-shirts, coffee mugs, and keychains emblazoned with the series logo and the copyright notice "©1999, Warner Bros" below the logo (photograph in Heyn 21). "Because of a delivery mixup", Heyn's photo caption reads, "most of the coffee mugs and keychains never made it to the convention in time for sale", and, he adds, "the remaining boxes of jackets, T-shirts and coffee mugs sold out in less than an hour, leaving many empty-handed attendees frustrated and upset" (21). Moreover, Heyn observes, "That unfortunate outcome only validated Warner Bros.' reticence to merchandise La Femme Nikita on a larger scale. The studio lost money on the internet broadcast and made next to nothing from the limited merchandising deal, which echoed their attitude toward the series' financial construction" (Heyn 20).

In 2001, a video game based on Nikita — featuring dialogue written by La Femme Nikita supervising producer Peter Lenkov — was announced for the Xbox system, but the project was later cancelled.