In ostensible service of attempting to become a genuine competitor in the world of comic book multimedia, IDW is moving to balance out its current stable of licensed series with a brand new roster of original and wholly publisher-owned IPs.
As recapped to the public by Bleeding Cool‘s Rich Johnston, this pivot for the Sonic the Hedgehog and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was first revealed by company CEO Davidi Jonas during an impromptu investors call on September 16th.
Speaking to shareholders in relation to that IDW’s Q3 2024 earnings call that same day (it’s unclear whether the investment call took place before or after the earnings report), Jonas began by admitting that the publisher has had “a pretty rocky last five to seven years.”
“The company went public in around 2009 and it was just a publishing company that really didn’t do entertainment or entertainment exploitation,” he explained. “And as a publishing company the business was quite profitable. It was a small company, entrepreneurial; every dollar that was made went back into reinvesting into the business, but there were real cash reserves for the company.”
“Around 2013, the company made the decision to make a foray into entertainment and decided to become something of a studio and a producer,” Jonas continued. “While we now are reaping some of the benefits with Wynonna Earp as an example, those were costly investments and frankly did not pay off. It ended up causing IDW significant financial stress towards the end of 2019 and 2020. The company just had to pay off loans for the productions as well as investments into entertainment as an asset class doing scripts and development and building a studio. If those things had panned out, I think everybody would be on a yacht clinking glasses and saying how brilliant that idea was. In retrospect, it didn’t work out and those investments didn’t pay off.”
“When I came into IDW about 16 months ago, the company was in a pretty precarious spot,” he further recalled. “They had gotten back down to a place where they were pretty low on cash. By the time we were able to staunch the bleeding, the company had gone from the start of the year at about ten and a half million in cash to about three and a half million.”
Turning to the future, Jonas then noted, “We’ve confidently turned things around and feel that we’re on a path of profitability, we are already profitable and believe we will be sustainably profitable.”
“We’re on a path of profitability, and we’re expecting 2025 – when our fiscal year starts, November 1st of 2024 that starts our fiscal 25 – we expect it to be an even better year than the turnaround,” he teased of the company’s current status. “We’re going to be profitable this year is our expectation but when you consider the swing from losing about $7 million to where we are now, it’s not just the profitability, it was the ability to to make that swing in such a short period of time. We’ve retained top talent, and we are investing in our talent, we believe that the future of our company is the people and their ability to deliver, to create, and to collaborate, and that’s where we’re investing our resources.”
As to how he saw this personnel investment paying off, the CEO praised the publisher’s “tremendously talented team of great storytellers” and revealed that he was looking to have them “focus on developing our own wholly owned IP”, which he believes will in turn “create huge value in the underlying portfolio for our shareholders”.
To this end, Jonas revealed that IDW was looking to explore three different types of original IPs: A new universe of superheroes, a world of crime-and-serial-killer based drama, and per Johnston, “retelling[s] of Biblical characters and stories, set in the modern era with a modern storyline.”
“[We want to reach] a whole new audience and bring the talent tent of the comic industry and mesh it with the religious community… which is a large book-buying community,” said Jonas. “Just seeing the success of religious cinema… [there’s] a huge element of growth.”
In exploring these genres, the CEO hopes for IDW to produce “prime for new publishing material as well as new entertainment material based on our new creative in the publishing business” – in other words, comic books that will serve as blueprints/illustrated pitches for Hollywood adaptations.
Unfortunately for those interested, per Jonas, the launch of these new IPs is “a bit down the road”.
“I wouldn’t say expect those in the next three months,” he concluded, “but I’d say, you could start expecting to see some of those titles coming out within the next 12 to 16 months.”