Diane Nelson
DC’s Diane Nelson among entertainment’s most powerful women
Diane Nelson
The Hollywood Reporter continues its industry power surveys with a list of the 100 most powerful women in entertainment that includes DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson at No. 49.
No stranger to Hollywood, Nelson was president of Warner Premiere and shepherd of Warner Bros.’ blockbuster Harry Potter franchise before being appointed in September 2009 as head of the studio’s newly formed DC Entertainment division, designed to better exploit the comic-book properties across all media. Five months later, Nelson named Dan DiDio and Jim Lee as co-publishers and Geoff Johns as chief creative officer; in September 2010, the company announced a “bi-coastal realignment strategy” that saw the closing of WildStorm and the move of business/administration and digital-content operations to a new office tower in Burbank, California, less than a mile from Warner Bros. Studios. It was under Nelson that DC launched its New 52 initiative and expanded its digital reach.
“She’s the gatekeeper for the entire DC brand, which includes films like The Dark Knight Rises ($1.08 billion in worldwide grosses) and such TV series as The CW’s new high-performing drama Arrow and various shows on Cartoon Network,” The Hollywood Reporter writes in its brief profile of Nelson. “Simply put, if you are a producer and you want to develop one of DC’s characters, you have to go through Nelson, 45. She also oversaw the relaunch of the entire line of DC Comics and created a plan for same-day digital comics on all platforms and partnering with Warner Bros. to develop new projects.”
Last week the trade paper named Robert Kirkman and Neil Gaiman among the 25 most powerful authors in Hollywood.
Check out DC Entertainment’s swanky new headquarters
The Pointe, the new home of DC Entertainment
DC Entertainment’s new Burbank, Calif., headquarters isn’t quite Titans Tower, but it’ll do.
The Hollywood Reporter tracks down the building that, beginning in mid-August, will house the company’s film and television, digital, administrative and consumer-products operations: The Pointe, a new 14-story office tower at 2900 W. Alameda Ave., nestled beside Disney/ABC, and less than a mile from Warner Bros. Studios.
DC has a 10-year lease on the entire second floor, 35,000 square feet of space “valued at roughly $16 million.” Landlord Worthe Real Estate Group advertises a “lobby crafted from the finest building materials; sleek and sophisticated, modern patterned glass with rich, imported Italian marble and travertine, walnut ceiling, and unique waved wood wall system.” The building also boasts “10 foot floor-to-ceiling vision glass for panoramic view of city and mountains,” and “over three acres of picturesque plaza with mature shade trees, walkways and benches.” There’s also a health club and restaurant on the first floor.
Warner Bros. has set up DC with temporary offices at 3400 Riverside Drive, where some have been working since last year, presumably following the announcement in late September of the massive corporate restructuring that leaves the publishing division in New York City while consolidating the rest of the companies operations on the West Coast. WildStorm’s offices in La Jolla, Calif., as well as the imprint itself, were shuttered as part of the reorganization.
Although DC wouldn’t say how many employees will work out of the new space once construction is complete, it’s known that DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson will have an office there and at the Warner Bros. lot.
$2.99 across the line, new letter columns, Milligan on Red Lanterns top DC announcement onslaught
Wow, DC Comics has returned from the holiday break with a vengeance. On its multiple blogs and here on CBR, the publisher has unleashed a veritable avalanche of announcements and initiatives for 2011.
Topping the list is the announcement, first mentioned by DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson and then expanded upon by Jim Lee, that DC will be holding the $2.99 price point across its line for all standard format ongoing series from both the DC Universe and Vertigo.
Meanwhile, PR guru David Hyde unveiled the return of letters pages to DC’s comics, presumably in the place of the current DC Nation column. Letters will be collected from both snail-mail submissions and messages submitted to the publisher’s new DCLettersPage.com website.
Comics A.M. | Two plead guilty to selling fake Comic-Con badges
Comic-Con International
Legal | Two Los Angeles men accused of selling counterfeit passes to this year’s Comic-Con International have pleaded guilty to theft and were placed on probation for three years. Farhad Lame and Navid Vatankhahan, both 24, were each ordered to pay a $750 fine, complete 10 days of community service and pay restitution to the victims.
Prosecutors say the two photocopied Comic-Con badges and sold them on Craigslist to people looking for last-minute memberships. They were arrested in July after two of their victims attempted to enter the convention using the counterfeit badges, which the women bought for $120 each. [The San Diego Union-Tribune]
Technology | Tech blog Chip Chick names DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson as one of its “Top 13 Women Who Impacted Technology in 2010.” [Chip Chick]
Bob Harras named DC Comics editor-in-chief, VP
The one-time editor-in-cChief of Marvel Comics has been selected to reprise that role for the Distinguished Competition. Robert Harras has been named Editor-in-Chief, VP, DC Comics, overseeing editorial for DC Comics, DC Universe, MAD Magazine and Vertigo, and reporting directly to Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee. Harras had been serving as group editor, Collected Editions for the company.
The move comes at a time when DC is still feeling its way forward following the announcement that many of its non-print divisions will be moving to parent company Warner Bros.’ home turf of Burbank, Calif. — with up to 80 employee layoffs and relocations in the offing — while its struggling WildStorm and Zuda imprints are shutting down entirely. Of course, Harras is no stranger to tough times at a Big Two publisher, having presided over Marvel during its late-’90s bankruptcy.
DC had been without an official editor-in-chief since the departure of Jenette Kahn in 2002. As executive editor, Dan DiDio was mainline-DC’s de facto editor-in-chief, and the absence of such a figure since DiDio’s promotion to co-publisher was a much-noted aspect of the year since Diane Nelson was brought aboard as president of DC Entertainment.
As CBR’s Kiel Phegley notes, the announcement bears additional interest in that it appears to be the first time that “DC Universe” has been used by the company to refer to an imprint akin to Vertigo. DC’s shared-universe titles are obviously an institution dating back decades, but the newly official-seeming nomenclature may serve to distinguish these mostly-superhero titles from books that the DC line has inherited from WildStorm and Zuda.
The latest DC Entertainment shakeups: What we know
DC Comics
DC Entertainment’s twin announcements on Tuesday — the division of operations between Burbank and New York, and the end of the WildStorm and Zuda imprints — was followed by a round of interviews that provides us with a fairly good picture of what the moves mean. Here’s what we know:
DC Entertainment’s “bi-coastal realignment strategy”: Despite the silly corporate-speak, this aspect of the DC announcements is, at least on the surface, the simplest to break down. The company’s operations related to business/administration, as well as multimedia and digital content, will relocate to “a Warner Bros.-managed property” in Burbank, Calif., while the publishing division will remain in New York City. The move is expected to be complete by the end of next year.
From there, however, the details get a little murky. Although the initial press release specifically mentions “consumer products” will be part of the move, neither DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson nor DC Comics Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee would say whether that was a reference to DC Direct, DC Comics’ collectibles division.
DC Entertainment moving to L.A.; DC Comics staying in NYC; WildStorm and Zuda shutting down
Ending a year of industry speculation and acute employee anxiety, DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson announced today that the company’s multimedia business operations — including feature films, television, digital media, video games and consumer products — and its administrative wing will be relocating to Burbank, California, home of parent company Warner Bros. Entertainment. DC Comics, DC Entertainment’s publishing division, will remain in New York City.
Meanwhile, in a separate post on DC’s Source blog, DC Comics Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee announced the company will cease to publish comics under the WildStorm banner as of December. The imprint’s WildStorm Universe titles will end (though its characters are promised to return), its licensed and kids’ titles will instead be released as part of DC proper, and its editorial team will be restructured and folded into the Burbank-based DC Comics Digital wing. Finally, the struggling Zuda imprint, which already saw its foundational website shuttered in July, will cease to exist after this week, its future titles to be released under the DC banner.
Stay tuned to Comic Book Resources and Robot 6 for much more on these developments.
SDCC ’10 | WB developing ‘hardcore violent’ Suicide Squad video game
Suicide Squad #1
In this afternoon’s “DC Focus: Geoff Johns” panel at Comic-Con International, DC Entertainment’s chief creative officer revealed that work has begun on a Suicide Squad video game.
Johns said the game, which is being developed by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, will be “hardcore violent.”
The studio’s video-game publishing unit has undergone dramatic expansion over the past few years, acquiring developers TT Games, Snowblind Studios, Rocksteady Studios and Turbine Inc., and in March announcing plans for a new game-development studio in downtown Montreal.
Following the critical and commercial success of last year’s Batman: Arkham Asylum, which sold a reported 2 million copies in its first three weeks of success, Warner Bros. announced it’s developing a sequel. It’s also working with Double Helix on a Green Lantern game that will be released along with next summer’s film.
DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson told Hero Complex it’s part of a push to put more DC characters in WBIE titles. (The new WB Games Montreal is expected to focus largely on the company’s comics properties.)
Although Nelson says that not all of the games will tie in to movies — for instance, Arkham Asylum had nothing to do with The Dark Knight — it seems likely that Suicide Squad title will be connected to the big-screen adaptation announced in February 2009.
SDCC ’10 | DC moving to L.A.?
Diane Nelson and Geoff Johns by Liz O. Baylen/Los Angeles Times
Long has this rumor bedeviled industry watchers and anxious DC employees alike, and now it’s getting its first quasi-official airing in the mainstream press: An L.A. Times profile of DC Entertainment President and Chief Creative Officer (and superstar writer) Geoff Johns by writers Geoff Boucher and and Ben Fritz notes that DC may move its publishing wing, long a fixture in New York City’s comics scene, to Los Angeles.
The bomb is dropped almost in passing: “The biggest challenge for Nelson and Johns may be merging the cultures of the Warner lot in Burbank and the offices of DC, which are in Manhattan but may soon move to L.A.,” write Boucher and Fritz. If so, this would be the biggest fallout yet from the structural reshuffling at the top of DC that took place late last year following Publisher Paul Levitz’s retirement, and a sign that parent company Warner Bros. is deadly serious about integrating the publishing/idea-factory side of DC with its movie-making and entertainment empire.
To be clear, no official announcement has been made, despite expectations that Nelson and company would address the move — potentially life-altering as it is for the DC staff — sooner rather than later. And I’d guess that if an announcement’s in the offing, it’ll wait until the San Diego dust settles. But a transition from Gotham to Hollywood may well be in the works.
(Via Heidi MacDonald)
Gaiman and Nelson battle Lady Gaga and others for ‘most influential’ crown
Neil Gaiman and Diane Nelson
As Brigid pointed out on Monday, Penny Arcade creators Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik are among the finalists on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world (they’ve slipped two spots to No. 11 since yesterday). However, they’re not the only comics-industry figures in the poll: Just six spots behind the duo is writer Neil Gaiman, followed way down the list is DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson (No. 156, as of this post).
It’s an online poll, so it probably shouldn’t be surprising that the creators of a popular webcomic and a comics writer-turned-bestselling author, both with a substantial web presence, rank high on the list, rubbing virtual elbows with the likes of actors Neil Patrick Harris and Robert Pattinson, and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul. They all have dedicated, and plugged-in, fan bases, after all (though none can touch Lady Gaga, who sits comfortably at No. 1).
But the inclusion of Nelson, who now hovers toward the bottom of the list just behind legendary singer-songwriter Patti Smith, is (pleasantly) unexpected.
“As comic books have rapidly emerged as the most bankable mainstream movie properties,” Time‘s description for Nelson reads, “a vast gulf has grown between the big-screen Marvel universe (Iron Man, Hulk) and that of DC Comics. Besides Christopher Nolan’s Batman chapters, DC has faced a drought at the multiplex. Nelson is charged with altering that course. As the head of the newly-created DC Entertainment, she’s been handed a sprawling comic book universe and tasked with adapting it for the mainstream. Millions of fans — and plenty of movie studio execs — are hoping she’s up to the task.”
To the best of my knowledge, there’s no Diane Nelson Fan Site, so it’s unlikely she’ll rocket into the upper echelons currently inhabited by Beyonce, Apolo Ohno, Stephen Colbert and President Obama. We’ll know for sure on April 29. Until then, the voting is open.
DC’s new crew speaks
DC’s blog The Source is chock full of posts by the new management team unveiled by DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson and Warner Bros. Pictures Group President Jeff Robinov today. Here are some highlights…
In terms of possible alternate candidates for the Publisher role, some very qualified names have been talked about and raised. Each have tremendous merit in his or her own right, but none other than this team were approached or considered seriously. Jeff Robinov’s and my interest in this specific combination of people – with their highly complementary talent – has been in play since very early on in this transition period. And our decision to pursue assembling this specific team was made as early as mid-November.