Recently Oni Press announced it has joined with 60Frames Entertainment, an online video distribution company, to create interlocking web videos and comic books.
The two initial properties will be the action-drama series Men with Guns: Assassin, created by Tom Fontana, writer/producer of the television shows Oz and Homicide: Life on the Streets; and the sci-fi series Ark, created by Robbie Thompson, and developed by Gabe Sachs and Jeff Judah, two executive producers of the new 90201 TV show.
While details of the venture are still being ironed out, the plan is to release web videos and comic books around the same time, each telling original yet connected stories. The web videos for Ark will be a combination of live-action and CGI animation, while Men with Guns will be entirely live action. The length and format of the comics is still being determined, but they will be produced using both Oni talent and the properties’ creators.
60Frames is a company that finances and syndicates original content, which is then distributed through video sharing, social networking and peer-to-peer websites such as YouTube, MySpace and iTunes. Since launching in January, the company has distributed over 20 original broadband series, and is expected to release over 50 series by year’s end.
The origin of 60Frames’ union with Oni goes back to when 60Frames CEO Brent Weinstein was an agent at United Talent Agency and Oni was one of his clients. When he moved over to 60Frames, he and Eric Gitter—of Oni’s media production arm, Closed On Mondays Entertainment—began discussing ways the two companies could collaborate.
“Oni was the ‘artist friendly’ comic company, and 60Frames was the ‘artist friendly’ Internet studio,” said Weinstein. “They were working with artists who were interested in exploring the digital world, and we were working with artists who have always seen comics as an amazing storytelling medium. It was a natural fit.”
Each individual video will likely be between two and five minutes long, with the length of the comics yet to be determined. Oni publisher Joe Nozemack said the format will be dictated by character and story. “So expect everything from original graphic novels, color comics and online comics.”
Gitter confirmed that the plan is for Fontana to write some of the Men with Guns comics himself.
“James Lucas Jones (Oni’s editor in chief) pretty much punctured my ear with his girlish shriek when the possibility of working with Tom Fontana was brought up,” said Nozemack.
In addition to original properties like Ark and Men with Guns, there are also plans to adapt existing Oni properties into web series for 60Frames. Nozemack said there will be opportunities for Oni talent to create new properties to launch online and in print as well.
The joint venture is expected to kick off in early 2009.
“If we can open up fans who would go on the web to the comic books, awesome, that’s great. If we can do the same with comics fans to the web, great,” said Gitter. “It seemed like a natural progression, and it seemed like such a smart piece of business and a lot of where the future is going, where we’re going to see a lot of different things intermingling that way—so to us it just seemed smart and natural.”
