Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, Valiant | Tagged: Dinesh Shamdasani, dmg, Mark Millar, netflix
Dinesh Shamdasani says that “Mark Millar got in Ted Sarandos ear about Valiant being unnecessary post Millarworld acquisition” to Netflix.
When writing about the relationship between Netflix and comics, inspired by a visit by Comixology and Dstlry’s Chip Mosher and David Steinberger to their Los Angeles headquarters, I wrote about an old story about Netflix, “They also came close to buying Valiant Entertainment, though the Millarworld situation also put the kibosh on that.”
Which caused a little reaction in certain places. Former Valiant Entertainment publisher, and current Bad Idea publisher Dinesh Shamdasani saw Chinese/Los Angeles investors DMG exercise their option to buy Valiant in 2018 when he was unable to find another buyer. Yesterday he posted “That’s true. Netflix almost saved Valiant from falling into the hands of the Chinese. As we were getting serious about making a deal though, Mark Millar got in Ted Sarandos ear about Valiant being unnecessary post Millarworld acquisition.”
Sarandos being the co-chief executive officer of Netflix. Mark Millar sold Millarworld to Netflix for what has been estimated at around $31 million in 2016. A stable of titles created by Mark Millar and major comic industry artists, adapted so far as Jupiter’s Legacy, Supercrooks and Chosen One.
Valiant suffered a serious lack of investment and profile after the DMG purchase and the ousting of executives including Dinesh Shamdasani. However, recently, Valiant has seen a resurgence courtesy of Alien Books.
Dinesh Shamdasani and many of the Valiant team set up a new publisher, Bad Idea Comics, aiming to take down many sacred cows regarding how comics are published, including no variants, no collections, no digital, and direct-to-stores rather than traditionally distributed, as well as many bizarre and counter-logical collectable schemes along the way. Shamdasani continued to answer questions and posted of X;
“There were two companies trying to save Valiant from ending up with DMG. It was a tough day when Netflix fell out but even tougher when the other fell out too and DMG was inevitable.”
“The conversation about saving Valiant from DMG (who were deep into trying to take over at that point) actually grew out of discussions around a Faith TV show.”
“We had so much fun and are so proud of the books. Check out the work we’re all doing at BAD IDEA. Feel like that’s the progression of the books at Valiant…. Don’t sleep on BAD IDEA though, about to drop a big slate thats gonna level up beyond anything we ever did at Valiant. All the Valiant peeps that are now working at BAD IDEA are killing it!”
And to the comment, “Made me smile, pretty certain Mark would have done whatever it took to keep Netflix from investing in anything else once he was on board”, Dinesh replied “except making good shows and comics…” Ouch! I rather liked Big Game!
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