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Re: mick post# 108534

Thursday, 09/28/2023 3:52:07 PM

Thursday, September 28, 2023 3:52:07 PM

Post# of 111691
Inside ‘The Boys’ Publisher Dynamite Entertainment’s Risky Bet On The Series Success

The Boys was a breakout hit for publisher Dynamite Entertainment
The savage superhero satire The Boys has not only helped Amazon Prime Video stake a major claim in the streaming wars, it’s also propelled the publisher of the cult-favorite comic series to new heights with sales of the collected editions of the original stories. But that win wasn’t automatic. Dynamite Entertainment rolled the dice bigtime on the audience’s appetite for the original material and that bet ended up paying off.

Dynamite Entertainment had only been in the comics publishing business for a couple of years when founder/publisher and CEO Nick Barrucci heard the rights to The Boys were up for grabs in 2006. The original publisher, DC’s Wildstorm imprint, got cold feet over the book’s profane take on superheroes, which ruffled the feathers of some retailers and customers. Barrucci, along with Dynamite President/COO Juan Collado and Executive Editor Joseph Rybandt, pitched series creators Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson on the company’s production values and hands-off editorial approach, winning the rights over better-established independents like Dark Horse and IDW.

The Boys was a strong seller for the company through the duration of its 72-issue run (plus a few tie-in series). Though it saw the usual attrition that long-running series experience at retail, Barrucci says the trade book collections of previous story arcs kept outperforming the market. It also attracted media interest early on, and was under option since 2006 or 2007 before finally making it to the screen in 2019 via Sony’s deal with Amazon Prime Video.


However, even the relatively strong critical and commercial success of The Boys could not prepare Dynamite for the impact that the show would have once it was released upon an unsuspecting world.


Barrucci, a co-producer of the series, says he knew the show was going to be a winner early on. Producers Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg were fans of the property determined not to compromise Ennis’s scabrous take on superhero culture, and they’d found the perfect collaborators in showrunner Eric Kripke and his team. Barrucci’s only question was whether viewers of the show would be interested enough to check out the source material.

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This is one of the big uncertainties even in the “peak geek” era of comic-saturated media. Some productions such as Watchmen or Umbrella Academy trigger a buying bonanza, sending the trade collections of comic book stories shooting to the top of the best seller lists, while others hardly have coat tails at all. Barrucci believes that while there’s no magic bullet, publishers can maximize their odds of success by keeping the material as compact as possible so customers aren’t overwhelmed with dozens of books, and most of all by making sure the books are available in all channels to everyone who wants to buy them when they want to buy them.

With The Boys Season 1 heading for a summer, 2019 release – and the public reaction still uncertain – Barrucci decided to roll the dice with a very aggressive publishing strategy. Pre-orders for the deluxe Omnibus editions that collected big chunks of the storyline in 300-400 page deuxe trade paperbacks had been running at around 3200 in early Spring. Typically, a publisher would print maybe 6000 copies to cover expected demand, and lock in the low costs of overseas printing to ensure a nice profit.

But rather than take the safe road, Dynamite opted for gigantic print runs of 15,000 for the first volume and 10,000 for succeeding volumes. Barrucci and industry veteran Alan Payne, Dynamite’s VP of sales and marketing, opted to do the printing in Canada, rather than Korea or China, paying a premium of $220,000 over the low bid for the ability to go back to press quickly enough that the pipeline would not run dry. He also had the sales and marketing team prime channel partners to ramp up orders slowly ahead of the launch.

Right after the annual Book Expo in June, Amazon began promoting the series in earnest and sales and orders started picking up. Dynamite immediately went back to print with new runs of 15,000 to stay ahead of demand. When the series dropped over the summer, the shelves of bookstores and comic book retailers were fully stocked with the $30 omnibuses. And sure enough, viewers intrigued by the show started buying. And buying. And buying.

All six volumes of The Boys omnibuses were tremendous sellers. Barrucci says the company sold nearly $5 million in omnibuses in 2019: very big numbers for a publisher in the second tier of periodical sales behind DC, Marvel and Image. The longest any edition was out of print was a week or two for Volume 3.

Barrucci said his main motivation was to make sure the direct market comic stores were never low on stock, as brisk sales of a big ticket item were crucial to their success. “We’d give retailers extra discounts, work with the distributor to give them extended billing, whatever we could do to make it work,” he said. “It was a risk to pay extra to print in Canada, but we thought, if customers have to wait 4-6 weeks for a reorder to come in, would they bother? Probably not.”





Barrucci says that the media adaptation of The Boys has brought lots of benefits to Dynamite, including the opportunity to repay the confidence that retailers have shows in the company. He says that, like every comic company large and small, he’s entertained offers from prospective partners and media companies eager to capitalize on Dynamite’s catalog of corporate owned IP. The company, represented in Hollywood by UTA Promotions, has generally opted for a more selective approach to media exploitation of its catalog, taking shorter term and more limited options on characters rather than tying up whole story universes in more extensive deals.


The comics-to-screen pipeline has proven to be boon to the publishing side of the industry that is always trying to scramble up the side of a gravel pile towards a larger mainstream audience. Even so, when a show like The Boys breaks through to reach that promised land and taps a nerve in the larger culture, publishers have to be smart to ride the wave. Barrucci went with his gut, betting on the quality of his property, the integrity of the retail channel, and the taste of customers. It looks like that confidence was well-founded.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robsalkowitz/2020/10/17/inside-the-boys-publisher-dynamite-entertainments-risky-bet-on-the-series-success/?sh=c6db3d378aa4








The ~54 year old LEGACY IP,

Vampirella will be produced by Mark Newbauer of Mike The Pike, Nick Barrucci and Juan Collado of Dynamite Entertainment. The deal for rights was negotiated by and between Joseph Lanius of Lanius Law & Associates for Mike The Pike Entertainment and John Michael Murray of Behr Abramson Levy with Charles Ferraro of UTA and Ford Lyttle Gilmore of Illuminati Entertainment for Dynamite.

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/mike-the-pike-productions-acquires-vampirella-rights-for-movies/










SUPER PARTNERS: $MIKP & DYNAMITE https://www.dynamite.com/htmlfiles/contact.html

Nick Barrucci is the REAL DEAL: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-barrucci-465aa78/






Nick Barrucci's success.....?

= 20 years in the MAKING...




Dynamite turns 20 YEARS OLD in 2024...

& $MIKP is LUCKY to have him as a partner!

https://www.previewsworld.com/Article/141030-A-Decade-of-Dynamite-An-Interview-with-Dynamite-Entertainments-Nick-Barrucci








$MIKP LONG-TERM CHART & EXPECTATIONS...







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