I guess it's time to start a pool. So ... which major media company will acquire Dark Horse and when will they announce it?
Posted by Jason Fliegel at September 10, 2009 8:33 PM
The only non-Big Two company with enough non-licensed inventory to warrant looking at a purchase is Image, and I'm not sure any studio would want to touch the tangle of rights their business model presents.
Obviously, you're forgetting a little something called "Comics Greatest World." Dozens of characters and the only one who has made it to the movies is Barb Wire.
Does Image actually own anything? I thought everything they published was owned by someone else.
Yes, I was forgetting it, with good reason -- the sad attempt at Barb Wire not withstanding, the only reasonable property from that line for adaptation was Ghost.
You are correct on the Image ownership question, which is why I don't think they'd be attractive at all as a property.
Dreamworks in March 2010. The corner of Dreamworks that'll handle Dark Horse future movie projects will be called Dark Dream or Dream Horse or Horse Dream. Michael Bay will be the go-to director, with Brett Ratner as the 2nd go-to guy...
You have it the other way round. Dark Horse will buy Sony. June, 2010. Man, that baby will be leveraged to the hilt.
Prior to all the excitement this week, there was already a Dark Horse Entertainment in place next to Dark Horse Comics. DH Entertainment is a seasoned film production company, having produced the Hellboy movies, The Mask, and various others in addition to the acclaimed Barb Wire. My understanding is that they've currently got a production deal at Universal, which--in light of the past two weeks--may be rethinking the permanence of that relationship.
Therefore, my prediction is NBC Universal in April 2010 in the conservatory with the candlestick.
Lucasfilm buying DH makes a certain intuitive sense, but something about it does not strike me as working. If they did buy Dark Horse, Lucasfilm would likely fold it over into their book division.
On the other hand, the studio that makes "Aliens v/s Predator" might try for Dark Horse. And, who made "Hellboy"? They might try for DH.
Dark Horse has plenty of licenses that might entice a license holder to try to buy up the party (Dark Horse) they sold the license to.
On a related note:
I can see Dreamworks/Paramount trying for IDW, which holds both the "Transformers" and "Star Trek" licences at some point in the next few years.
Universal is certainly going to want access to something for its theme parks if nothing else, given the Disney Marvel acquisition. (Depending on how the agreements are written, Disney may not be able to cut them off, but presumably neither side really wants Universal hawking Disney properties long term.) I don't know if there's available IP of comparable magnitude out there. Dark Horse probably isn't big enough, though Hellboy the Ride would be interesting to see implemented.
(Universal does already have the Harry Potter license for its parks, but they already have plans for that that don't involve retrofitting Islands of Adventure.)
I suppose there's an outside chance that Universal could outbid Six Flags for rights to the DC characters from Warner. (AFAICT, Six Flags having them is a holdover from Time-Warner's controlling stake in those parks, which ended a decade or so ago.) But given the current trend, Universal would probably rather have something they owned outright.