Well, well, well. Look who it is. It’s a new addition to WWAC’s PUBWATCH series. We’ll be giving you the latest on TKO Studios each month. The theme this month will be: TKO, Making Money Moves, where we will be diving into the two massive announcements from TKO. If this particular PUBWATCH is a bit on the short side, forgive us! We’re still ramping up our coverage (aka, Andrea is still reading).
The News
TKO and Simon & Shuster Team Up
TKO Studios, LLC announced a distribution deal with book publisher Simon & Schuster, Inc. The deal will bring TKO titles like Djeliya, by Juni Ba, The Banks by N.Y. Times bestseller Roxane Gay (Hunger, Bad Feminist), and Ming Doyle (The Kitchen) to the masses using Simon & Schuster’s extensive reach. The publisher will be responsible for managing TKO’s worldwide trade book sales and retail distribution.
Speaking about the deal, Tze Chun, TKO Studios President and Co-founder said, “We’re excited for this partnership with Simon & Schuster to dramatically expand the reach of our extensive, bestselling catalog and bring TKO titles to the attention of an even wider range of retailers and fans around the world.”
Over on the Simon & Schuster side of the coin, they seem just as excited. “We are delighted to welcome TKO Studios to our family of distribution clients,” said Michael Perlman, Vice President, General Manager of Simon & Schuster Publisher Services. “We look forward to working together to take their business to new levels.”
It will be interesting to see how this opens up the distribution channels for TKO Studios. It’s the latest in a series of distribution deals the book publisher has gone into with comics publishers. Everyone’s jumping the sinking Diamond ship.
TKO, Roxane Gay, and New Regency to Develop TV Series
This news is hot off the proverbial press. Deadline first reported that TKO is partnering with production company New Regency to adapt writer Roxane Gay and artist Ming Doyle’s graphic novel, The Banks, into a television series. You may recall in November 2021, TKO and New Regency announced their exclusive deal to develop TKO’s IP for TV.
The Banks chronicles three generations of women who also just happen to be the most successful thieves in Chicago. The women of the Banks family don’t always get along, but their latest heist has them healing old wounds in order to avenge a loved one. The six-part graphic novel chronicles the lives of Clara, Cora, and Ceila Banks. In August of 2020, Variety reported the 2019-graphic novel was being adapted for film. WWAC reached out to TKO Studios about what this latest development means for the feature length film. In response, TKO says, “The film is no longer moving forward. Instead TKO decided to pursue this television version through our new production partnership with New Regency.”
About TKO
TKO Studios was co-founded by Salvatore Simeone and television showrunner Tze Chun in 2018. The graphic novel publisher distributes directly to the public. They also release their mini-series all at once, in what the team likes to call a binge-friendly format. If you wanted to know more about how the comics studio came to be, The New York Times chronicled the thinking behind the company in their 2018 write-up. Since 2018, TKO has kind of been on a tear. The publisher has added numerous imprints and penned multiple deals, mentioned above. Their latest imprint is called TKO Rogue, which will release literary and pop-culture prose works.
TKO Rogue’s first titles are set for print and digital publication on January 11th, 2022 and include the occult thriller, Brood X, by Eisner-nominated writer, Joshua Dysart (Unkown Soldier, B.P.R.D.), and renowned artist MK Perker, and One Eye Open, a nail-biting murder mystery by New York Times Bestselling author, Alex Grecian (The Yard), and artist Andrea Mutti.
Well, that about wraps it up for the latest TKO Studios news. I promise next month will be a more in-depth discussion about published works with the pithy reviews you’ve all come to expect from us here at WWAC. Until then, keep on, keepin’ on.
