Zak Kadison’s Los Angeles-based company has signed a direct-to-publisher development partnership with Random House Publishing Group’s intellectual property creation and development division.
The alliance will enable the parties to devise original transmedia intellectual properties (IPs) and jointly develop external properties and partner with authors, screenwriters, directors and media companies to develop film, television, video game and print properties with exploitation potential across multiple media platforms.
Kadison said while a number of properties were already in development it was too soon to announce titles. The deal will involve the creation of world bibles – comprehensive resources containing vast amounts of material pertaining to an IP.
“With this transmedia partnership we are breaking new ground in the way that content is developed and produced and we couldn’t ask for a better partner than the Random House Publishing Group,” Blacklight founder and CEO Kadison said. “Rather than relying on pre-existing franchises, this partnership gives us the ability to work directly with those creating the best intellectual property to simultaneously create world-class content across platforms.”
“We are leveraging one of Random House’s core strengths – story development – in new and exciting ways. This includes developing rich worlds ready for multiplatform implementation,” director of creative development at RHPG Keith Clayton said. “Blacklight has one of the most unique transmedia strategies in Hollywood, and our relationship with them will help to further enrich the quality of our content as we develop properties for mediums beyond the book.”
Blacklight, which formed in 2009 under a first-look deal with Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment, has shopped several feature projects to studios this year, including a deal with Disney for The Runner with Marc Forster attached to direct, Arabian Nights to Universal and Blood Wars to Warner Bros.
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