Following Google’s acquisition of the popular viral video site YouTube, competing internet entity Yahoo! is raising its profile as a video content provider. The company’s Yahoo! Studios has joined forces with the Gotham Group, a management firm that represents animation and family entertainment talent and content, to produce and distribute original animated programming for the web. The productions will be made available across the Yahoo! Media Group properties, including Yahoo! Entertainment and Yahoo! TV.
‘We pride ourselves on finding new revenue streams for our content creators and Yahoo! provides a fresh and exciting opportunity for the world to interact with the great talent we represent,’ says Gotham Group CEO and founder Ellen Goldsmith-Vein.
‘We are always looking for opportunities to make dynamic and entertaining content available on Yahoo!,’ comments Yahoo! Studios general manager Drew Buckley. ‘We are thrilled to work with Gotham to create and program compelling animated content for our users.’
Veteran entertainment industry exec Jon Vein initiated the deal and negotiated the agreement on behalf of The Gotham Group, which will draw upon the company’s base of pre-existing animated shorts while originating new content. The company currently represents more than 250 directors, writers, producers, illustrators and artists, as well as a number of book and comic book publishers. Gotham also serves as a producer on live action and animated films and television projects, and currently has a feature-length adaptation of Holly Black’s and Tony DiTerlizzi’s best-selling fantasy book series The Spiderwick Chronicles set up at Paramount with Nickelodeon Movies. The company is also an exec producer on the American version of Aardman Animations’ Creature Comforts, which will premiere on CBS in early 2007, and has direct to DVD deals in place with Lionsgate and Starz Media.
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