Skybound Entertainment


Skybound Entertainment is an American multiplatform entertainment company founded by Robert Kirkman and.

History

Skybound Entertainment is the company behind the long-running comic, The Walking Dead, created by Robert Kirkman. Since the company’s founding in 2010, Skybound has developed properties in traditional and new media, including comics, gaming, television, film, and digital media series. The company has since launched into the virtual reality space, and in 2017, created an in-house digital studio for online content.
In 2016, Skybound Entertainment expanded internationally with the opening of Skybound North, led by former Lucasfilm Animation executive Catherine Winder.
In 2018, Skybound created Skybound Games to develop video games based on its intellectual property, and Skybound Stories, a joint venture with Sky plc.

Comics

In addition to the Eisner Award-winning comic book series, The Walking Dead, Kirkman’s other titles include long-running superhero comic Invincible, Outcast, Super Dinosaur, and Oblivion Song.
With a creator-owned driven platform, Skybound has also created other popular comic book titles that include fantasy adventure comic Birthright, by Josh Williamson, and the historical fiction comic, Manifest Destiny by Chris Dingess.
In 2017, Skybound released the revenge comic, Extremity, by creator Daniel Warren Johnson, and their first vampire horror comic, Redneck, by Donny Cates. Kill the Minotaur by writers Christian Cantamessa and Chris Pasetto, and artist Lukas Ketner is set to hit comic shops on June 14, 2017. Recently, they have also started "Skyward" from the writer of the TV show Lucifer.

Television and film

After Alpert and Kirkman's success with AMC’s The Walking Dead, the duo announced their second television adaptation for Kirkman's comic, Outcast. This was announced in June 2014 and received a series pickup on Cinemax.Skybound Entertainment#cite note-6| Outcast centers on protagonist, Kyle Barnes, played by Patrick Fugit, fighting a demon that has plagued his small Virginia town for decades. The series lineup includes Philip Glenister, Brent Spiner, Reg E. Cathey, and Wrenn Schmidt. The first season of Outcast premiered on June 3, 2016 and was renewed for a second season.
Skybound partnered with Viki to develop Korean pre-apocalyptic drama Five Year. The series will be shot in Korea as a K-drama with a local cast and crew, and the parties plan to distribute the first 16-episode season on Korean television. The series, based on an original story by Kirkman, centers on a family facing an impending apocalypse within the next five years. In 2017, Skybound announced a partnership with 360 Powwow to produce Five Year in various Latin American markets.
Skybound produced Robert Kirkman’s Secret History of Comics. This six-part docuseries explores a wide range of topics from the history and world of comic books and premiered on AMC on November 12, 2017.
In 2017, Skybound announced that Robert Kirkman’s second longest running comic, Invincible, will be adapted into a feature film to be written, directed and produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg for Universal. Kirkman, Alpert, and Skybound Co-Presidents of the TV/Film division, Sean and Bryan Furst, will serve as producers on the film. However, the film has since been re-developed as an animated series for Amazon Prime Video set to be released in 2020. The company's other film projects include the feature film AIR, starring The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus and Academy Award-nominated actor Djimon Hounsou. That same year, it was announced that Spin Master Entertainment and Atomic Cartoons would make an animated television series based on Super Dinosaur, a comic that Kirkman created alongside Jason Howard in 2011. The show launched in 2018.

Digital

In 2015, Skybound released the first-ever narrative virtual reality series, Gone, for Samsung's Milk VR platform. Gone surrounds the disappearance of a young girl from a playground, and the family's journey in learning what happened. The series was filmed in 360 degrees and includes shifting perspectives with "hotspots." "Hotspots" are used as clues, offering a fully immersive experience. Gone was directed by J.T. Petty As of 2016, Skybound is set to produce a horror VR series, Lies Within, the first project out of Skybound’s partnership with interactive theatrical company Delusion.
In 2017, Skybound opened an in-house studio to create and expand original digital content. Since the opening of the space, Skybound developed a Live.me series focusing on diversity in TV and media hosted by Yvette Nicole Brown. Other original content filmed in the studio include the weekly series Skybound’s Happy Hour. Happy Hour features special guests every week to create The Walking Dead inspired cocktails. Former guests have included Ross Marquand and Michael Traynor.

Skybound Games

In April 2018, Skybound announced the formation of Skybound Games, a publishing division focused on indie games. Coinciding with the announcement, the company also signed publishing deals for console versions of the games Slime Rancher and The Long Dark.
In October 2018, due to the collapse of Telltale Games, Skybound Games announced they would be working on finishing up the final two episodes of ', "Broken Toys" and "Take Us Back", to end the game adaption of their series. In addition to continued digital release, Skybound Games also released physical editions of the game for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.
In February 2019, Skybound Games announced plans to release the remastered versions of six classic Dungeon & Dragons games: Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II, ', Icewind Dale, , and Neverwinter Nights, developed for modern computers by Beamdog, as console versions later in the year.

License and merchandise

Skybound's party game, Superfight, kickstarted in 2013. Superfight is a game where players battle made up superheroes against each other, in ridiculous, and often heated, hypothetical arguments. In 2014 Darin Ross partnered with Skybound to publish the game. Superfight has 19 expansion packs to date.
In 2017, Skybound signed a deal with Druid City Games for release of its game The Grimm Forest, which raised over $400,000 on Kickstarter.

Titles