Franchise-focused production & brand management company Foundation Media Partners has formed Foundation Books and launched a groundbreaking new partnership with publishing company Macmillan Publishers. Foundation has accelerated its expansion into the book space by forming a multi-year publishing deal with Macmillan.
Spearheaded by Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group President and Publisher Jen Besser and Foundation Media Partners Founder and CEO Patrick Hughes, the venture will focus on titles that have strong cinematic roots. The companies will then partner on the TV and film ventures associated with the new titles.
According to Foundation Books and Macmillan, they are introducing a creator/writer friendly model designed to give authors more power throughout the film and television development process. This could mean authors writing first drafts of screenplays, staying involved as meaningful producers or a combination of both. Additionally, this model opens the door for Macmillan to participate further along in the content creation process, which creates more opportunity and profit potential for authors. Foundation Books will range from franchise-focused titles to personal stories featuring important and prolific voices.
Foundation Media represents authors with combined sales of over 60 million books, with a track record of converting literary IP to film. The company adapted and produced the animated feature hit “Bad Guys,” based on Aaron Blabey’s best-selling children’s book franchise, for Dreamworks Animation and Universal Pictures, which was the No. 1 film at the box office. It also adapted and produced Blabey’s “Thelma the Unicorn” book franchise as a feature film for Netflix, which hit No. 2 on the Netflix chart. Foundation most recently partnered with Rose Byrne’s production company, Dollhouse Pictures, for the adaptation of the bestselling novel “Wolf Girl” by Australia’s Anh Do.
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Hughes led the launch of Foundation Books and orchestrated the company’s deal with Macmillan. “We have a great working relationship with Macmillan and we are well aligned with how we look at the future of the book business and how that business interacts with Hollywood,” Hughes said. “We are very excited about the slate we’ve put together and the model we’ve built at foundation which empowers creators and authors right from the start and continues throughout every stage of the creative process. We’re excited about building franchises and telling stories that matter so we can continue to prove that books are truly the foundation of the entertainment industry.”
Besser added, “In an ever-changing publishing landscape, it’s thrilling to partner with Foundation Media, a company who shares our belief that our approach to publishing should be just as bold and creative as the authors and artists whose work we publish.”
Foundation’s new book unit comes on the heels of the company setting a first look deal with Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing to develop and produce film and television projects mined from Simon & Schuster’s library spanning 100 years of publishing. Foundation is developing and adapting a multi-title slate from Simon & Schuster’s Little Simon Chapter Books & Graphic Novels as animated and/or live action properties for film and television.