Tag Archives: dinesh shamdasani

Bad Idea Has Some Very Interesting Ideas for the Comic Industry

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Yesterday, the new comic publisher Bad Idea was announced and teased. Today, we have more details on what to expect.

Debuting in May 2020, the publisher will release one or two single issues per month in a “pristinely designed, prestige-format package” for $3.99. There will be no variants and the issues will not be released digitally, collected into trade paperbacks, hardcovers, or other “bookshelf formats.” That means there will only be single-issue comics.

But, there’s a catch! The comics won’t be available everywhere. Instead, Bad Idea will self-distribute the series to an initial 20 comic book shop who will qualify based on “a unique system of criteria” that includes extra promotional commitments and a “strictly enforced ‘limit one per customer'” policy for Bad Idea comics, among other stipulations. More retailers will be admitted throughout the year to eventually bring that number up to around 50 stores by the end of 2020.

Megalith

The first series will be ENIAC by Matt Kindt and Doug Braithwaite. Other projects are coming from Marguerite Bennett, Mae Catt, Joshua Dysart, Tomas Giorello, Eric Heisserer, Jody Houser, Lewis LaRosa, Jeff Lemire, Peter Milligan, Adam Pollina, Robert Venditti, Zeb Wells, and more. In the announcement, Megalith was also teased with a cover by Lewis LaRosa. Projects have been worked on for the past year in “secret.”

First issues will usually be oversized with page counts exceeding the standard 22 pages or feature “hidden features” and other surprises not mentioned in public.

The goal is to get people into comic shops making each release an event.

Bad Idea is the brainchild of the five team members that rebuilt Valiant and developed the forthcoming Bloodshot feature film. Dinesh Shamdasani and Warren Simons will share the roles of Co-CEO & Co-Chief Creative Officer, Hunter Gorinson will serve as Publisher, Joshua Johns will serve as Director of Marketing, and Atom Freeman has returned as a Sales Consultant.

A Bad Idea is Coming to Comics

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Bad Idea teaser

It’s been teased for a while but it has been officially announced that Valiant Entertainment veterans Dinesh Shamdasani, Warren Simons, and Hunter Gorinson are returning to comics in 2020. The three have kicked off a new publishing company, Bad Idea.

The announcement today included the above teaser image featuring artwork from several of Bad Idea’s projects.

Announced creators featured in the teaser and working with the publisher include Doug Braithwaite, Tomas Giorello, Lewis LaRosa, and Adam Pollina.

More details are coming soon.

Hivemind and Brian Taylor are Bringing The Illuminatus! Trilogy to Television

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Illuminatus!

Hivemind has announced that it has partnered with writer/director Brian Taylor and European production company Kallisti for a new television series based on The Illuminatus! Trilogy – the hugely influential science-fiction franchise created by authors Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea that first introduced the concept of “the Illuminati” into the popular consciousness, while simultaneously fueling, deconstructing, and skewering America’s modern-day obsession with conspiracy theories.

When the offices of a Manhattan news publisher are bombed, anti-authority reporter George Dorn begins to suspect that the disturbing conspiracy his editor has spent months investigating is not only real, it might be the key to unlocking all of history’s greatest unanswered mysteries. As George sets out to find his mentor and uncover the truth about an all-seeing secret society that seems to unify every insane, inane, and outlandish conspiracy theory ever told – from the JFK assassination, celebrity cabals and lost continents to UFOs, ancient gods and the truth about the New World Order – he finds himself drawn deeper into a war between two shadowy groups. On one side stand the Discordians, a clandestine band of chaos-loving guerrilla fighters led by the enigmatic modern-day pirate Hagbard Celine; and on the other, the Illuminati – elite authoritarians who secretly manipulate world events, ever-expanding their wealth, influence, and physical power in a plot to escape the limitations of human existence.

Illuminatus! will be executive produced by Dinesh Shamdasani and Hunter Gorinson for Hivemind, and Iris McPherson and Kirstin Winkler for Kallisti. Taylor will serve as executive producer and showrunner.

A globetrotting science-fiction/conspiracy thriller laced with subversive humor, Illuminatus! was first published in 1975 at the height of post-Watergate paranoia and has remained in print ever since.  Often ranked as one of the most influential and obsessively followed pieces of cult science fiction ever produced, references and allusions to the series have turned up everywhere many citing the series as an inspiration and influence.

Celebrated as a “mind-twisting science fiction…classic for more than 30 years” by the New York Times, “the ultimate conspiracy book” by the Village Voice, and the “New Testament” of the American counterculture underground by Vice, Illuminatus! has spawned nearly a dozen sequels and spin-offs, along with comic books, stage plays, radio productions, role-playing games, and more based on the original trilogy. In recent years, Kallisti has also developed an immersive Illuminatus! VR experience, exploring series’ many iconic characters and settings, that has exhibited at numerous arts and technology events in the United States and Europe.

James Wan’s Atomic Monster Boards Hivemind’s Gideon Falls

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Gideon Falls

Hivemind has announced that it is joining forces with James Wan and his Atomic Monster production company for Gideon Falls – Hivemind’s upcoming television adaptation of the best-selling Image Comics series from acclaimed creators Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino.

Fresh off of Gideon Falls‘ high-profile win for “Best New Series” at the 2019 Eisner Awards, Wan will executive produce the hour-long horror drama alongside Atomic Monster’s Michael Clear, Hivemind’s Jason Brown, Sean Daniel, Kathy Lingg and Dinesh Shamdasani, and original series creators Lemire and Sorrentino. Rob Hackett will oversee for Atomic Monster.

An atmospheric thriller colliding rural mystery and urban horror, the series follows an ensemble cast of seemingly random strangers — a washed-up Catholic priest, an uncompromising female sheriff, and a young recluse obsessed with unraveling a conspiracy buried in his city’s trash — as they become drawn into a mystery connected to a long-forgotten local legend.

Final Fantasy XIV is Being Developed into a Live-Action Series

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Final Fantasy XIV

Sony Pictures Television and Hivemind announced a new partnership with global video game powerhouse Square Enix to develop a first-of-its-kind, live-action adaptation of a beloved chapter from the blockbuster Final Fantasy series, which has sold more than 144 million units worldwide across three decades. 

The live-action television series will tell an original story set in the fantastic world of Eorzea, based on Final Fantasy XIV, the franchise’s blockbuster online role-playing game. Since it first debuted in 2013, the online title has continued to delight and amass millions of players around the world year over year and only further cemented Final Fantasy as one of the most storied and influential franchises in gaming history.

Inspired directly by the world and characters of the title’s fourteenth installment, the project will embrace the bold and genre-bending sensibilities of the revered and long-running Final Fantasy series as it explores the struggle between magic and technology in a quest to bring peace to a land in conflict. Filled with iconic hallmarks of the title’s revered mythology – magitek and beastmen, airships and chocobos – the forthcoming series will feature a mixture of new and familiar faces. Those will, notably, include the live-action debut of Cid – one of the games’ central and most beloved characters who has appeared in almost every installment of the franchise to date. 

Final Fantasy’s multibillion-dollar legacy is one of the most influential pieces of global pop culture of the past 30 years with a footprint that now encompasses all major home and handheld consoles, as well as toys, card games, manga, soundtracks, concerts and live events on three continents. The upcoming television adaptation represents a momentous new milestone for the franchise and will mark the first time a Final Fantasy world – and its many beloved inhabitants – will be realized in live action.

Jason F. Brown, Sean Daniel, and Dinesh Shamdasani of Hivemind will serve as Executive Producers on the series. Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton have been commissioned to write for the series and will also serve as Executive Producers.

EC’s Weird Fantasy and More is Being Brought to Life by Hivemind

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Hivemind has announced a new partnership with William M. Gaines Agent, Inc., the proprietors of EC Comics, for a number of film and television projects based on the hugely influential – and often controversial – comic book publisher’s groundbreaking legacy and library. One of the first endeavors of the partnership will be Weird Fantasy – a new television show inspired by the shocking and subversive sci-fi/fantasy series that collided visionary genre storytelling with socially conscious themes of racial and gender equality, anti-war advocacy, nuclear disarmament and ecological preservation to create some of the most impactful and hotly debated comic book stories ever produced. This is the first time that WMG Agent Inc. has made Weird Fantasy available for adaptation in more than two decades.

Changing the industry seemingly overnight in the early 1950s under the stewardship of publisher and writer William M. Gaines, EC Comics quickly became the dominant force of the era’s booming comic book industry, selling tens of millions of copies annually and generating intense, nationwide controversies with taboo-smashing, confrontational stories in series like Tales From the Crypt and MAD Magazine. EC’s unique formula eschewed superheroes in favor of science fiction, fantasy, war, horror, and humor – redefining comics storytelling with a newly sophisticated and artist-driven approach that would pave the way for the ascendancy of both Marvel Comics and the counterculture underground in the decades to come.

Weird Fantasy Judgement Day

A lynchpin of the EC line during the publisher’s creative watershed, Weird Fantasy produced dozens of seminal stories that intersected razor-sharp social commentary with epic science fiction, high adventure and dark fantasy by some of the most celebrated comics creators to ever work in the medium, including Frank Frazetta, Wally Wood, and Harvey Kurtzman. Weird Fantasy‘s defiantly rebellious sensibility is perhaps best exemplified by “Judgment Day” – a history-making story by William M. Gaines, Al Feldstein, and Joe Orlando that championed the then-burgeoning Civil Rights movement and provoked a showdown with the Comics Code Authority, the pro-censorship organization that policed and sanitized the comic book industry for more than 50 years.

William M. Gaines

The new partnership is also slated to include a feature film based on the life of William M. Gaines, the former EC Comics publisher and self-styled comics provocateur who challenged the rigid moral code of 1950s America with shockingly innovative and deeply subversive tales of fantasy, horror and humor that sold in the millions…only to find his company investigated by Congress and his books burned in the streets in the wake of EC’s staggering success. Chronicling one of the greatest untold chapters in American history, the film will follow Gaines’ transformation from a staid, New York publishing impresario into a counterculture hero, guardian of artistic freedom, and champion of the First Amendment as his darkly humorous journey through the troubled birth of the comic book industry reveals the Red Scare-era witch hunt that nearly doomed an American art form, through the subsequent founding of MAD Magazine and eventual rise of Marvel Comics in EC’s wake.

Both projects will be produced by Gaines’ daughter and grandson, Cathy Mifsud and Corey Mifsud, for EC, alongside Dinesh Shamdasani, Sean Daniel, Jason F. Brown, and Hunter Gorinson for Hivemind. The projects will mark Gorinson’s first for Hivemind, where he also has joined as VP Brand & Content Strategy.

Hivemind Acquires Gideon Falls for Television

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Hivemind today announced that it has won an intense multi-studio bidding war and acquired the rights to bring the hit Image Comics comic book series, Gideon Falls, to television in partnership with co-creators Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino. Hivemind’s Jason Brown, Sean Daniel, Kathy Lingg and Dinesh Shamdasani will executive produce the series alongside co-creators Lemire and Sorrentino with high-level creative talent already circling the project.

An atmospheric thriller colliding rural mystery and urban horror, the series follows an ensemble cast of seemingly random strangers – a washed-up Catholic priest, an uncompromising female sheriff, and a young recluse obsessed with unraveling a conspiracy buried in his city’s trash – as they become drawn into a mystery connected to a long-forgotten local legend.

Established in 2018, Hivemind is the new production entity from long-time producing partners Sean Daniel and Jason Brown, Bad Robot veteran Kathy Lingg and former Valiant Entertainment CEO and Chief Creative Officer Dinesh Shamdasani. Dedicated to partnering with high-level creative talent and globally recognized intellectual properties from the worlds of science fiction, fantasy, horror, comic books, video games, anime, and more, Hivemind recently inked a first-look deal with Amazon Studios. Gideon Falls marks a major new rights acquisition for the label, which will develop the series as an hour-long horror drama based on Lemire and Sorrentino’s repeatedly sold-out, critically acclaimed comic title of the same name that instantly became one of 2018’s biggest breakout hits upon its debut in March.

Gideon Falls is the latest property to join Hivemind’s quickly expanding roster of film and television projects. The company currently produces the acclaimed science fiction series The Expanse – which recently made a historic move to Amazon – as well as Netflix’s upcoming adaptation of The Witcher, based on the series of novels that inspired the best-selling game franchise. Its next feature film will be Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark with producer/co-writerGuillermo del Toro and director André Øvredal, which begins production this summer.

Gideon Falls will also notably re-team Lemire with producer Dinesh Shamdasani, who joins Hivemind as Co-President. Lemire and Shamdasani previously collaborated on multiple best-selling comics projects, including The Valiantand Bloodshot Reborn, during his time at the helm of Valiant Entertainment, which Shamdasani departed following a major acquisition in early 2018. In addition to his duties at Hivemind, Shamdasani is also currently producing a big-screen adaptation of the Bloodshotcomic book series for Sony Pictures with star Vin Diesel, director Dave Wilson, and Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Eric Heisserer that is set to begin filming this summer.

Around the Tubes

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The weekend is almost here and we’re excited for a chance to relax and kick the final little bit of flu hanging around the team. What geeky things will you all be up to while we recover? Sound off in the comments below!

While you decide on that, here’s comic news and reviews from around the web.

Publisher’s Weekly – Comics Industry Asks ‘NYT’ to Restore Graphic Bestseller Lists – Yes please!

The Beat – Dinesh Shamdasani to deliver keynote speech at ComicsPRO meeting – This seems very interesting considering the recent shake-up at Valiant.

Kotaku – Twitch Gets New Policies For Sexual Content and Harassment – Long overdue.

 

Reviews

Talking Comics – VS #1

The Russo Brothers to Produce Valiant’s Quantum and Woody

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It’s being reported that the Russo Brothers will be tackling another comic property once their work on The Avengers: Infinity War wraps up. The project based on Quantum and Woody sounds like it’ll be a television project according to The Wrap who first reported the news.

The comic series is about the “world’s worst super-duo” is published by Valiant Entertainment but created by Christopher Priest and MD Bright and first published in 1997 and ran until 1998 with another short run in late 1999 and early 2000. A second volume launched in 2013.

Anthony and Joe Russo, Mike Larocca, and Dinesh Shamdasani will executive produce the series. Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari will script the pilot and also executive produce. The duo are behind Marvel’s Ant-Man and it’s sequel Ant-Man and the Wasp.

This is the latest live-action project based on Valiant properties. The comic company is working with Sony and screenwriter Eric Heisserer on films based on Harbinger and Bloodshot. Feature films based on Archer & Armstrong and Shadowman are also being worked on. The company also announced a live action project Ninjak vs the Valiant Universe at New York Comic Con in 2016. The webseries is being produced with Bat in the Sun Productions.

Quantum and Woody is about interracial brothers who are given superpowers after a lab accident and must deal with the murder of their father. One’s straightlaced and the other is a complete screw-up and together the series and characters are a fantastic mix of spandex superheroes and comedy.

(via The Wrap)

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