Sunday, October 11, 2009

Archie Comics signs with Creative Artists Agency

From Archie Comics

Archie Comic Publications Inc. has signed with CAA to represent the company in pursuing new developments in film, television, music, interactive media, direct-to-video and theatrical animation.

“With CAA’s guidance, we feel Archie Comics Library of characters can be at the forefront of a new entertainment powerhouse with strong brands for fans of every age,” said Jon Goldwater, co-CEO of Archie Comics.

"Now more than ever, the comic book industry's ability to create and nurture enduring characters and stories to translate to other media is key. Just look at the value the Marvel Comics characters hold for Disney," added Goldwater, alluding to Disney's recent purchase of Marvel Entertainment. "Archie Comics is positioned to add the same value with its deep library of properties."

While major emphasis will be placed on building the franchises for such cornerstone properties as Archie and his Friends, Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Josie and the Pussycats, the company also plans to draw upon its 70-year publishing history encompassing thousands of characters. Archie has sold over 1.5 Billion comics and is published in a dozen languages and distributed all over the world.

“The Archie Library of characters is far more varied in style, diverse in content and aimed at more age groups than most people are aware,” added Goldwater. “We see huge growth opportunities for other properties such as Katy Keene, Suzie and Ginger, tough guys Sam Hill and Young Dr. Masters as well as great teen and ‘tween characters like Seymour, That Wilkin Boy and Wilbur.”

Other youthful properties will see new attention in both publishing and other media including Little Archie, Archie Babies, Li'l Jinx, Pat the Brat, Dotty and Ditto, and Pipsqueak.

“Then there are our cult classics like Cosmo the Merry Martian and Super Duck that we feel are primed and ready for CGI animation. We have thousands of characters to draw from,” noted Goldwater.

“In the coming months we expect to have extremely exciting news on bringing all our comic book characters to life in a variety of media,” concluded Goldwater.

As they say in the comics, “to be continued…”

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