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MANIA: Now, Men in Black was not an Ultraverse title, but it was a Malibu title, right?
It was a Malibu title. Actually it's an interesting story, when I first saw Men in Black back in the early 90's, to me it screamed "Movie!" Everyone was reminding me that it was a superhero world out there, and this was far from superhero.

Well, it's high fantasy but there's nobody in a costume.
Exactly, so I didn't care how it did as a comic book, and it only did mediocre as a comic book. It got a cult following, but it was a small following. I figured it was worth spending the development time and resources and dollars because it screamed movie.

We've now put together the animated series that which follows the movie this fall. That is a for sure thing for Saturday mornings. We've merchandised it in basically everything. From toys to you name it.

Where does the animated series appear?
WB. And it's looking cool. Also I'm executive producer of Night Man which will come out this fall with Glen Larson.

And that's for Fox.
No, Tribune. Which are mostly WB stations.

Okay, I haven't heard of Tribune before.
They are a distributor. They're not a well known name, the stations are all well known because they're all on the regular television, they're not cable.

And many of them if not all of them are hooked up with the WB?
Yeah and they are significant clearance across the country. Actually when we showed them the eight minute reel on Night Man, it cleared like hours after they saw it. They just said, "Okay, we're in."

Great. Now, Night Man was one of the Ultraverse heroes.
Yeah.

I read a lot of the Ultraverse stuff but I never read his title, I am ashamed to admit. Who is Night Man and what is he about?
Night Man is a character that got his powers after getting into a car accident. A metal plate got lodged in his head which turned off the area of the brain that needs sleep, so he's up 24 hours a day. It also turned on his ability to hear other people's evil thoughts. So he could be walking down the street and hear someone thinking, "I'm going to kill Debbie behind the docks at midnight, tonight!"

And he can only hear evil thoughts, right?
Only evil thoughts.

He's not going to know who Debbie is, not going to know which dock, and this isn't a guy who is a fighter, he's a jazz player. He plays jazz clubs at night. So he dons his costume to scare people, somewhat, and pads it up so it's a little better for him if he get hit because again, he has to learn to fight. He's not a fighter by nature.

Well, that's cool because most superhero costumes are padded these days, but they don't actually admit it.
Yeah, he admits it because he needs it. If he's going to go out and fight crimes, so to speak. And he initially didn't think, 'Gee, I'm going to go fight crime!' His initial thought is, 'I have to help that women so she doesn't get killed.'

Sure, but if you only hear evil thoughts, that's about all you can do with this superpower. That's pretty clever.
Yeah. It's really cool, and the TV show follows the comic closely, it live action. It's actually cleared world wide. In fact it was interesting how the deal was put together, it was sold in most countries before it was sold in the United States.

Why is that?
For a financing perspective, we found distributors in other countries that thought it would be good for their market and they each participated in part of the financing of the show. So we actually put it together selling it world wide. Which is where a lot of film and TV is going. Like over half of the box office receipts are world wide, so with Night Man we took it to that extreme to try to get it sold.

I knew that movies were becoming international, but I didn't know that television were starting to do that too. Are you guys out in front on that?
Well, with Night Man we're out in front on that. A lot of people are now looking to that, we now have the experience to do it, which is nice.

Any other Ultraverse characters that are going to appear in Night Man?
Well, in the show, no.

Yeah, I know that some appeared in the comic.
Yeah. Prime is also a feature over at Universal, and we're executive producing Universal.

Okay, and that's a couple of years away, I would assume?
Yeah, and that's live action.

And that's also closely based on the comic?
Yeah. I'm going to have my friend's girlfriend Kelly in it and the whole bit in there. I have an executive producer role on everything that comes out of the whole Malibu library, so to speak. So if things happened in the future, like Night Man's happening and Prime's happening and a few others that are in development and if those things go through, I'll be producing those and working, participating in the merchandising and all that sort of thing.

Hardcase seems a natural for TV and film.
Considering he's an actor in the comic, yeah.

And therefore can behave in more of a theatrical way.
There's a lot of interest in Rune. A lot!

Well, I'm not surprised. Spawn is extremely popular, with the whole evil supernatural thing, so why not Rune?
Rune has had a tremendous amount of interest and Solitaire, I don't know if you remember that title. But Solitaire has had a lot of interest from the Malibu universe.

Nothing you can talk about yet?
No. If you look at all the years of me giving stories and what not, I like announcing when things are real because I always find that everyone always says that this is in development and that is in development and nothing ever happens. So even with the Men In Black animated show, I didn't come out and say, "Yes, there's going to be one," until the last piece of paperwork was signed because it was really hard to get going. We were unsure several times. I always knew Men in Black was going to happen, so that I've always said it was going to happen. So I like going and not take the typical stand point, I like to just be honest about where things are in the schedule.

That way people listen to you because what you said last time was true.
Yeah. I never get in the position where I have to say, "Forget what I said last time." I can go through ten years of announcements and say, "Look, this is how I've always done it." But the hint is, there's a lot of interest in Rune, there's a lot in Solitaire.