DreamWorks Acquires Classic Harvey Comics

DreamWorks Animation is acquiring Classic Media, owner of properties such as the Harvey Comics characters (including Casper, Golden Books, Lassie, The Lone Ranger, Where’s Waldo, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Veggie Tales, and with some rights to Voltron, for $155 million, the company announced Monday. Eric Ellenbogen and John Engelman, who co-founded and ran Classic, will join DreamWorks. Classic Media has 80 employees at its headquarters in New York and offices in the UK and at its Big Idea Entertainment offices in Nashville.

Over its most recent year, Classic Media had $89 million in sales and $19 million in operating profit.


Classic Media has a bit of a convoluted history. It was sold to British company Entertainment Rights by Ellenbogen and Engelman in December of 2006. Ellenbogen and Engelman formed Boomerang Media with funding from GTCR in January of 2008. When Entertainment Rights ran into liquidity problems , Boomerang acquired its assets in April of that year.

The deal is expected to close by the end of Q3.

Brett Ratner to Helm "Youngblood"

Variety is reporting that Brett Ratner, director of the Rush Hour movies and X-Men: The Last Stand, has been tapped to helm the big screen adaptation of Rob Liefeld’s Youngblood comic book series. Reliance Big Entertainment, a Mumbai-based company which signed a $1.2 billion deal with Dreamworks last September, has acquired the rights to Youngblood for a mid-six figures price. The Indian media conglomerate has signed nine deals with the development companies of various Hollywood figures including George Clooney, Julia Roberts, and Ratner. Reliance has also nabbed the rights to the French graphic novel Fly Wires for Ratner’s Rat Entertainment.

Youngblood, which was first published on its own in 1992 as the flagship release of the newly-formed Image Comics, is the saga of a team of superheroes working for the U.S. government. Ratner told Variety: "Most of the great graphic novels are gone, and Youngblood is one of the few comic books left with tent-pole potential. It was a real personal passion project for me, and a lot of people wanted Youngblood, but the amazing thing about the guys at Reliance is the speed with which they’re able to move.”

According to Variety the project is being fast-tracked along with Fly Wires, which Ratner is producing with Sylvain White (Stomp the Yard) directing.

Straczynski Updating 'Forbidden Planet'

Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski, who also wrote Clint Eastwood's upcoming Changeling, is writing a long-in-the-works update of the SF classic Forbidden Planet for Warner Brothers, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Joel Silver is producing via Silver Pictures.

Warner picked up the project on the down-low earlier this year. As late as last year, it was set up at DreamWorks, with David Twohy attached to direct. Prior to that, New Line had it. James Cameron, Nelson Gidding and Stirling Silliphant have been associated with the remake over the years.

Released in 1956, Planet told the tale of an expedition sent from Earth to check on a colony of scientists on a far-off planet. They find two members, a man who has found alien technology that doubled his intellect, Dr. Morbius, and his daughter, both of whom have managed to survive an unseen monster roaming the planet. The movie is loosely based on Shakespeare's The Tempest.

The movie, directed by Fred Wilcox, starred Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis and Leslie Nielsen, but is perhaps best known for the character Robbie the Robot.