Valiant Entertainment has been fully acquired by DMG Entertainment, who sought to increase their former 57% stake into full ownership in order to expand into film, television and other media platforms.

“This is about taking it to the next level,” says Mintz, a former filmmaker-turned-entrepreneur. “I am not looking on expanding from a publishing standpoint but from a motion picture standpoint.”

Originally founded in 1989 Valiant became a successful comic book company by focusing on creating compelling characters with a focus on story telling, much like the relaunched company set out to do in 2012.

Why did Valiant require a relaunch?

In the mid 1990’s they were purchased by Acclaim Entertainment with intent to expand their reach in the video game market. You’ve never heard of Acclaim? That’s because the company went bankrupt in 2004, and cutting a long story short the Valiant characters were sold off. Eight years later Valiant Entertainment, with CEO Dinesh Shamdasani at the helm relaunched those same characters into one of the best shared superhero universes.

With DMG Entertainment purchasing Valiant, and three of the executives resigning (Dinesh Shamdasani, Gavin Cuneo, and Peter Cuneo via Newsarama, although Gavin and Dinesh are reported to be staying on as consultants), one has to wonder if the past is repeating itself if the company’s new focus is less on the comics than on expanding to new media, leading to a marked drop in the quality of the company’s comic book output.

Obviously only time will tell, but I’m remaining cautiously optimistic that, at least in the near term, the quality of the comics won’t dwindle – although I’m less than thrilled at Shamdasani leaving the company and characters he helped return to prominence, I’m less concerned about the repetition of history regarding Valiant’s comic book universe fading into the ether as DMG already owned a majority of the publisher and presumably could have taken these steps toward other media regardless of full ownership.

One still has to wonder why the creative shake up? Were there opposing opinions on the way the company should head creatively? Based on this tweet from Dinesh Shamasani, it’s possible, but it’s likely we’ll have to wait awhile before the full details emerge – if they ever do.

(via The Hollywood Reporter)