Prepping pics with John Landis, Bruce Campbell
Image Ent. Inc., a licensee, producer and distributor of DVD programming, today announced a major venture with comic book powerhouse Dark Horse Ent. The two entities will produce, distribute and share ownership of theatrical features, direct-to-video projects, animated content and soundtrack albums for worldwide distribution under the new entity Dark Horse Home Entertainment.
Image president and CEO Martin W. Greenwald says this agreement is a major step for Image, which historically has not owned the content it has distributed. He also says the arrangement will help facilitate the company’s new focus on animation. ‘Dark Horse is one of the most popular names in the comic book industry,’ he states. ‘They have successfully produced more than a dozen of their comic book-based properties for film, television and animation. Image’s recent expansion into the anime genre made this relationship even more enticing to us.’
The two companies will produce horror, science fiction, superhero adventures and anime. One of the first slated projects will be a horror feature written and directed by John Landis (National Lampoon’s Animal House, An American Werewolf in London, Twilight Zone: The Movie). Other films will be directed by actor Bruce Campbell (The Evil Dead trilogy, Bubba Ho-Tep) and writer Neil Gaiman (Coraline, The Sandman). Barry Levine, who introduced the two companies, will produce with Mike Richardson, founder and president of Dark Horse Ent.
Dark Horse properties successfully translated to film include Mike Mignolia’s Hellboy, as well as past favorites The Mask, Timecop and Barb Wire. Upcoming theatrical features include Alien Vs. Predator, Son of the Mask, Frank Miller’s Sin City and Steve Niles’ Criminal Macabre. Dark Horse Comics also publishes Matt Wagner’s Grendel, in addition to such licensed properties as Star Wars, Conan The Barbarian and Shrek. The company’s manga titles include Kazuo Koike’s Lone Wolf & Cub, Katsuhiro Ottomo’s Akira, Yasyhiro Nightow’s Trigun, Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell, Hiroaki Samura’s Blade of the Immortal and Kosuke Fujishima’s Oh My Goddess!
