Disney Acquires Radical's Oblivion

Disney Acquires Radical's Oblivion
Courtesy of Diamond Comics

August 5th, 2010, Los Angeles, CA – Radical Publishing is proud to announce that Disney has acquired the film adaptation of OBLIVION, based on Radical Publishing’s illustrated novel created by Tron: Legacy director, Joseph Kosinski, written by Rex Mundi creator, Arvid Nelson, and with illustrations by Andrée Wallin. OBLIVION will be directed by Joseph Kosinki and will be produced by Radical’s President and Publisher, Barry Levine, and Kosinski. Radical Studios’ Executive Vice President Jesse Berger is signed on as Executive Producer. Kosinki is repped by Verve and Anonymous Content while Radical is repped by CAA and David Schiff.


In a future where the Earth’s surface has been irradiated beyond recognition, the remnants of humanity live above the clouds, safe from the brutal alien Scavengers that stalk the ruins. But when surface drone repairman Jak discovers a mysterious woman in a crash-landed pod, it sets off an unstoppable chain of events that will force him to question everything he knows.

“We’re thrilled to partner with Joe Kosinski on OBLIVION,” said Barry Levine, president of Radical Pictures. “Joe is one of the most creative forces in filmmaking today. From the moment he teamed with Radical to produce the book and film, he had such a clear vision of the OBLIVION landscape and universe. Add to that Joe’s successful partnership with Disney on Tron: Legacy, and you have all the ingredients for a phenomenal action/adventure film.”

OBLIVION, the 128-page illustrated novel, will be released in Summer 2011 and will feature prose, combined with over 40 fully painted landscape renderings. OBLIVION will be distributed worldwide through Random House.

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Disney unveils KeyChest technology (Reuters)

Source: Reuters

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Walt Disney Co on Tuesday unveiled a technology called KeyChest to enable consumers to buy films or television shows from various distributors, store them on remote servers, and play them on multiple platforms ranging from TVs to computers and phones.

Disney said it plans to roll-out KeyChest for both the U.S. and the international market, and that it will soon announce partners who will participate in the program.

"Discussions are going to step up dramatically at the Consumer Electronics Show," said a Disney spokesman, referring to the upcoming technology conference in Las Vegas.

Disney said negotiations with content distributors, cable companies and telecommunications services have been ongoing for several months.

Disney hopes the technology will be deployed before the end of 2010.

The company also said a third-party company will operate KeyChest, and that it expects other studios to make their content available through the authenticating technology Disney has developed.

Company officials said the goal of KeyChest is to make it easy for viewers to see a movie accessed from various outlets and to address the issue of compatibility in maneuvering content from device to device as well as limited storage space on consumers' hard drives.

She also said this was not intended as a Disney only venture.

"The idea is to have all the movies consumers want to buy available in this way," said Kelly Summers, vice president of digital distribution at Disney, on Tuesday in a briefing about KeyChest. "If it's Disney only, there really isn't much value here," she said.

Disney officials said they hope to use KeyChest to build momentum for the long-stalled digital distribution of films.

It comes at a critical juncture for the industry which saw the sale of films on DVDs and Blu-rays drop by an estimated 13 percent in 2009. Online sales of movies, the hoped-for bright spot for the industry, grew from $150 million to $250 million in 2009, but not an enough to offset the decline in physical sales.

With KeyChest, a consumer can buy a movie from a participating store. That customer's account with other participating services, such as telecom services or cable companies, would be updated to show the film is available for viewing.

Summers stressed that KeyChest will not be a service that consumers access directly.

Rather, Disney envisions KeyChest as a program that retailers can tap into to verify that consumers have already purchased the right to access a movie, and then make that movie available to the consumer across different devices.

(Editing by Carol Bishopric)