At San Diego Comic Con, Jeff Katz announced creators behind his comedy anthology book “Comedy Death Ray,” and the first film to come out of the comic book and film production house.
Bob Odenkirk, Sarah Silverman, Patton Oswalt, B.J. Novak, David Cross, Janeane Garofalo, Paul Scheer and Zach Galifianakis are among some of the first to contribute to the anthology, for which each comedian will create a comicbook.
The goal is to see individual books in the “Comedy Death Ray” series, shepherded by Scott Aukerman, generate spinoffs for TV or film that would be produced by American Original.
“Comedy Death Ray” in its original incarnation was a “night of comedy” headed by Scott Aukerman, which also became a radio show. Its some excellent stuff, and considering the amount of talent contributing to the anthology, I think this may be one of the freshest comics to come out. Especially with Patton Oswalt, a personal favorite of mine.
Also announced, is AO’s partnership with Rantz Hoseley’s digital comics distribution device LongBox, which seems to me to be a iTunes for comics. Also announced is a dramatic feature of the documentary “Bigger, Stronger, Faster”:
The company’s branding arm recently signed TNA Wrestling, a rival to World Wrestling Entertainment, and in addition to trying to build TNA into a bigger biz, one of Katz’s first projects will be to adapt the sports docu “Bigger, Stronger, Faster,” into a scripted feature.
Project, to be penned by the docu’s helmer Chris Bell, with Jason Dolan (“Sydney Hall”), will be a “Traffic”-like exploration of performance-enhancing drugs. Katz will produce with docu producers Alex Buono and Tamsin Rawady serving as exec producers.
This will be exceptionally interesting considering how performance enhancing drugs have long been a mainstay in wrestling, and only recently has it come to light how these drugs affect these athletes. Also, mentioned are the deals with Titmouse Animation, the people behind “Afro Samurai” and“Metalocalypse”, and a sci-fi anthology called the “Galaxy Project” with the creature designers behind “Alien vs Predator.”
Sounds like some neat stuff coming out through the new company.
