POW! Entertainment Brings Stan Lee's Trademark Talents to the Digital Space

The creator of X-Men, Spider-Man, Iron Man and other iconic comic book characters is preparing for a new frontier in digital entertainment.

Stan Lee's new company, POW! Entertainment

, announced two new partnerships this week – one with YouTube and one with EQAL – that mark the beginning of the firm's expansion into the digital space. “POW! was formed post-Marvel to give Stan the opportunity to create new stories, new characters, new franchises,” Gill Champion, President and CEO of POW! Entertainment, told Benzinga this week. “POW! stands for Purveyors of Wonder. We started off in the more traditional way of film and we probably have seven to 10 scripts or treatments or synopsis in different stages of being developed for future films, including one that would create a whole other universe of POW! characters that has 10 superheroes in it.” Champion said that it raises POW!'s spectrum from doing its first Chinese superhero and working on its first Indian superhero. “Stan's brand allows us the opportunity to attract writers that we would like to work with [as well as] actors and directors, and opens up almost any door for any studio or production company to listen to what we're doing,” Champion boasted. “They're not all going to agree to do everything we're doing, but the brand recognition is certainly there and validates [POW!] based upon [Stan's] historical past.” And as technology and content continue to converge, Champion said that it seemed like a natural fit for POW! to enter the digital realm. “Part of that convergence is brand recognition,” Champion explained. “And who better to be recognized in the world than Stan Lee's brand, which is international, and based upon so much history in the past. And we know that multiple generations of fans grew up reading his stories and seeing his movies. But now that there's a whole new generation of young people – consumers – that digital is their media of choice for a number of reasons. We realize the importance of this new generation of consumers and fans and the types of storytelling that we excel in.” For a company aiming to accomplish so much, you might be surprised to learn that POW! only employs 12 people. “One of the things we've excelled at is being able to create our IP and then work with strategic partners and alliances to further develop that IP,” said Champion. “Our first initiative under the digital division that we've formed is a partnership with Michael Eisner's company,

. It's pretty impressive, I think, Stan Lee and Michael Eisner [coming together]. Michael was one of the early guys and companies that had an initiative to get into the Internet while it was still probably a Wild West, and stuck with it, and seemed to understand the production and distribution of content better than anybody I've been affiliated with.” Vuguru is just the beginning. “We were also awarded one of the Google

YouTube channels in partnership with Vuguru, which will be named The World of Heroes, that provides us an even broader spectrum to introduce new product, new consumer awareness, new social media, through that partnership,” said Champion. “It's gonna be an extremely important year for us in 2012 to launch this and put together content that we feel will not only reach the consumers but will have a degree of interactivity that is most important to us.” “We also formed an arrangement with a company called EQAL,” Champion continued. “EQAL is a media company known for building networks around celebrities and brands. We'll also launch that in 2012.”

Considering POW!'s push into digital distribution, I asked Champion if he thought that a Hulu partnership would happen next. “We have a lot on our plate to start in 2012,” he said. “But knowing how important – [our] vision and Stan's vision – those channels are going to be the future of distribution and production. Certainly it's not unlikely, but we definitely have a lot on our plates to start launching this channel and do the job that we intend to do with it on YouTube.”

“We're working with some of the distribution companies both in China and India now, and as part of our global campaign, hopefully some of these will come to fruition in 2012,” Champion said of the company's future.

“POW! recently became a reporting company,” said Champion. “We had our best second quarter; we just reported our third quarter. I think we're in a very good position starting from 2012 [to become] profitable, hopefully. Disney

is an investor in our company, and we have a first-look deal with Disney as well.” Further, Champion said that there are a couple of properties that Disney is currently looking at. “Both for movies and digital,” he said. “We've been doing mostly live-action. We are doing some animation, but at Disney it has been live-action.”

Finally, I asked Champion if POW! would like to trade on the NASDAQ or the New York Stock Exchange. “We've been very careful in building up our asset base,” he said. “That's been the goal of the company, and I think we are successfully doing that. And then we will be able to look and visualize the next step, if there is going to be a next step in the growth of POW! It's only our first three quarters that we're reporting. Unfortunately it takes a fair amount of time to develop some of these projects. We're very careful and we want to make what's best for our management and for the shareholders of the company as well.”