POW! Entertainment Archives

Stan Lee ‘Excelsior’ tribute in Los Angeles will feature Kevin Smith, Mark Hamill, RZA and other celebrities

January 24, 2019

The following is a press release from Legion M:

“Excelsior! A Celebration of the Amazing, Fantastic, Incredible & Uncanny Life of Stan Lee,” will be attended by Mark Hamill, RZA, Clark Gregg, Felicia Day, Bill Duke, cast members from Marvel’s “The Runaways,” cast members from FX’s “Legion,” and Fox’s “The Gifted,” among many other luminaries from the entertainment world.

Fans wishing to attend “Excelsior! A Stan Lee Celebration” can get a limited number of tickets at legionm.com/stantribute. All net proceeds from the event’s ticket sales will go to the non-profit organization The Hero Initiative, a charity supporting comic book creators, artists and writers in need.

The tribute event on Wednesday, January 30, will begin at 4 p.m. PT with a section of the TCL Chinese Theatre forecourt transformed into a fan experience of Stan Lee’s life and career. There will be a memorial centered around his cement imprint which will be displayed next to the speaker’s podium. Ticketed fans will be allowed to leave flowers, candles and sign a book of condolences.

Photos, artwork, Stan’s classic comic books and memorabilia will be on exhibit in the forecourt along with a special preview of pop-culture artist Rob Prior’s upcoming gallery show “The Legacy Collection of Stan Lee.” Prior will do a live painting in the forecourt during the opening portion of the tribute. Artist Jennifer Contini will also have her series “This Love Lives On” featuring images of Stan Lee on display. The White Castle Crave Mobile will be serving sliders, one of Stan’s favorite snacks, for all the fans.

Producers of the event, Legion M’s David Baxter and Terri Lubaroff, Stan Lee’s POW! Entertainment’s Bob Sabouni and Agents of Mayhem Darren Passarello will greet fans and introduce several public speakers before Kevin Smith arrives and assembles an honor guard of world class cosplayers representing many of Stan’s co-creations, including Avengers, Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, and more to pay their respects and lead the crowd in a final salute to this legendary pop culture icon accompanied by a police band of pipes and drums.

On the red carpet, a group of veterans from Veterans in Media & Entertainment and The American Legion of Hollywood Post 43 will honor Stan for his service during World War II, and Chief Paul Cell, President of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, will recognize Stan’s contributions for his work supporting law enforcement and creating safer communities.

Family from the other co-creators of the Marvel Universe will attend to pay their respects and join in the celebration, including Tracy and Jeremy Kirby, grandchildren of Jack Kirby, Mark and Stephen Ditko, nephews of Steve Ditko, and Jenna Parker, daughter of Sol Brodsky, all of whom were part of the original Marvel Bullpen.

After red-carpet arrivals, the tribute will commence in the TCL Chinese IMAX Theatre where Kevin Smith will moderate conversations with celebrity speakers from the entertainment industry including Mark Hamill, Rob Liefeld (Co-Creator of Deadpool), Michael Uslan (Executive Producer, “The Dark Knight”), RZA, and Tom DeSanto (Executive Producer, “X-Men”).

The evening will also include discussions with stars from the comics world and Stan’s personal friends, including Marv Wolfman (Blade creator), Marvel’s Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada and Executive VP, Head of Television Jeph Loeb, artist Bill Sienkiewicz (Elektra: Assassin), and Stan’s business partner at Stan Lee’s POW! Entertainment, Gill Champion.

Members of the creative team behind the Academy Award®-nominated “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” including writer/producer Phil Lord and producers Chris Miller, Avi Arad and Amy Pascal will also be on stage to honor Stan. Producers Lauren Shuler Donner and Derek Hoffman round off the evening’s panels as they speak to and celebrate the modern impact of Stan’s characters through two decades of X-Men in film and television.

The evening will be complete with video tributes from stars who are unable to attend as well as live celebrity performances of Stan’s favorite music and poetry.

The tribute event is being produced by fan-owned entertainment company Legion M, which is revolutionizing the way entertainment is made in Hollywood by uniting a growing fan community of 50,000+ members, including more than 10,000 fan-owners. In addition to producing film and television projects, Legion M organized Stan Lee’s hand and foot imprint ceremony at the TCL Chinese Theatre in 2017. Legion M is producing the tribute with the production and consulting company Agents of Mayhem whose founder Darren Passarello worked for Stan for several years.

Both companies are working with Stan Lee’s POW! Entertainment, the multimedia company founded in 2001 by Stan with his friend and business partner Gill Champion, its president. Stan Lee’s POW! Entertainment is the sole owner of the Stan Lee name and all new original content he created since 2001.

Under the leadership of CEO Scott D. Williams and Gill Champion, the company has been and will continue to be the guardian of Stan Lee’s legacy and is excited to roll out new projects and new adventures Stan had been working on. On behalf of Stan Lee’s POW! Entertainment, Chief Marketing Officer Bob Sabouni will be overseeing and guiding the tribute day alongside the other event partners.Producers of the tribute event will continue to announce additional details for the event via social media feeds. Details of specific speakers, performers and other activities will be shared on the social channels for Kevin Smith, Legion M, Agents of Mayhem, and Stan Lee’s POW! Entertainment. (@TheRealStanLee, @ThatKevinSmith, @LegionMOfficial, @AgentsofMayhem).

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About Kevin Smith

Starting with CLERKS, Kevin Smith has been making movies, TV, live shows and podcasts for 25 years now. He almost died recently but it was only a passing thing.

About Stan Lee’s POW! Entertainment

POW! Entertainment Inc. is a multimedia company founded in 2001 by the iconic comic book creator Stan Lee with his friend and business partner Gill Champion, who is the President today, to create and license intellectual properties for entertainment media, including: feature length films, television, merchandising, branded content and other related ancillary markets as well as exclusively maintain and protect the ownership of his name, likeness, voice, trademarks and publicity rights throughout the world. POW! Entertainment was acquired by Hong Kong-based Camsing International Holding Limited, one of China’s leading brand licensing, entertainment, marketing and promotion companies, in 2017. Under new leadership, another original founder and industry veterans from Marvel and MGM, POW! is working with top writers, artists, animators, filmmakers and actors to extend the legacy of the greatest storyteller of our time.

About Legion M

Legion M is the world’s first fan-owned entertainment company that is revolutionizing the way entertainment is made in Hollywood by uniting a growing fan community of 50,000+ members, including more than 10,000 fan-owners. Through its Fan-Owned business model, Legion M invests in a diverse slate of original projects in various stages of development, including the feature film and comic book “Girl With No Name”; multiple original television series including “Evermor,” “Airship Cowboys,” and “Malice;” as well as interactive and VR-based projects, including “ICONS: Face to Face” starring Stan Lee and Kevin Smith. Legion M also invests in partner productions, including the critically acclaimed Colossal, starring Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis, and directed by Nacho Vigalondo, the cult hit “Mandy” starring Nicolas Cage and directed by Panos Cosmatos, and “Bad Samaritan” starring David Tennant and directed and produced by Dean Devlin. Legion M and its fan community has produced high-profile events honoring some of the industry’s biggest names, including the Stan Lee hand and footprint ceremony at Hollywood’s TCL Chinese Theatre in 2017. To learn more about Legion M and become a member of the Legion for free, visit www.legionm.com.

About Agents of Mayhem™

A production and consulting company founded by a dynamic force within the entertainment industry with over 16+ years’ experience working with the world’s biggest brands. A.O.M’s mission is to create exceptional and original content, through its creative studio arm New Yorkie Studios™ which serves as an incubator for content, by showcasing talent, skills, and passion of celebrity and non-celebrity creators. A.O.M focuses on development, content strategy, creative consulting, and distribution. (www.AgentsofMayhem.com)

About The Hero Initiative

The Hero Initiative is the first-ever federally chartered not-for-profit corporation dedicated strictly to helping comic book creators in need. Hero creates a financial safety net for yesterday’s creators who may

emergency medical aid, financial support for essentials of life, and an avenue back into paying work. It’s a chance for all of us to give back something to the people who have given us so much enjoyment.

Since its inception, The Hero Initiative has had the good fortune to grant over $1 million to the comic book veterans who have paved the way for those in the industry today. For more information, visit www.heroinitiative.org or call 626-676-6354.

Stan Lee, Marvel Comics’ most influential icon, dead at 95

November 12, 2018

by Carla Hay

Stan Lee (Photo courtesy of Tinseltown Shutterstock)

Stan Lee, a co-creator of numerous iconic Marvel Comics characters, including Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk, died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on November 12, 2018, according to the Associated Press. He was 95.

Lee (whose real name was Stan Lieber) was born in New York City, and began his career in 1939 as an illustrator’s assistant/gopher at Timely Comics (which would later morph into Atlas Comics and then Marvel Comics), eventually rising to editor-in-chief in 1941 and publisher in 1972. Along with several collaborators (including Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Larry Lieber and Don Heck), Lee co-created the characters that became Marvel’s most famous and the basis of most of the mega-successful Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movies. In addition, to Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk, Lee was a co-creator of such Marvel characters as Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, Thor, Black Panther, X-Men, Ant-Man, Doctor Strange, Nick Fury, Daredevil, Hawkeye, Black Widow and War Machine. The Avengers are a group of superheroes that were mostly co-created by Lee, who helped Marvel’s business expand into movies and television, with Lee being a producer or executive producer on the vast majority of film and TV releases with Marvel characters.

Lee had cameos in all of the MCU movies that were made before his death, from 2008’s “Iron-Man” to the still-untitled fourth “Avengers” movie that is set for release in 2019. He also had cameos in Sony Pictures’ movies starring Marvel characters (such as all of the “Spider-Man” movies and 2018’s “Venom”), as well as Fox’s movies starring Marvel characters, such as the “X-Men” series, the “Fantastic Four” movies, the “Deadpool” movies, 2003’s “Daredevil” and several Marvel-related TV series.

In the 1990s, Lee left his position as Marvel Comics publisher, but for the rest of his life, he was still tied to Marvel as chairman emeritus and as a producer/executive producer on various Marvel-related projects. He and Peter Paul co-founded the company Stan Lee Media in 1998, but the company filed for bankruptcy in 2001, after a stock-manipulation scandal that did not involve Lee but involved Paul, who eventually pled guilty to the crime. Lee then went on to co-found POW! Entertainment in 2001. Disney acquired Marvel Entertainment in 2009.

The last two years of Lee’s life were filled with grief and turmoil. In 2017, his wife, Joan, died at the age of 95, after 39 years of marriage. He was also caught up lawsuits and counter-lawsuits surrounding control of POW! Entertainment and his estimated $70 million fortune. (Lee’s $1 billion lawsuit against POW! Entertainment was dropped in July 2018, two months after the lawsuit was filed.) And there were stories of abuse and Lee’s alleged mental-health issues, with Lee accused of being both an abuser and a victim. A former caregiver claimed that Lee sexually harassed her, while a separate accusation claimed that he was the target of elder abuse by caregivers.

Before his health problems, Lee was an active and regular fixture at comic conventions around the world. From 2012 to 2018, Lee’s POW! Entertainment partnered with Comikaze Expo to present the Los Angeles comic convention Stan Lee’s Comikaze, which in 2016 was renamed Stan Lee’s Los Angeles Comic Con. In October 2018, Comikaze announced the end of its partnership with Lee and POW! Entertainment, and the event has been renamed Beyond Fest Expo LA. Lee’s last major public appearance was at the Los Angeles premiere of “Avengers: Infinity War” on April 23, 2018. Lee is survived by his daughter Joan Celia “J. C.” Lee.

Stan Lee’s POW! Entertainment teams with co-creators Luke Lieberman, Ryan Silbert and Audible to develop a dramatized audio experience

July 26, 2017

The following is a press release from Foundry Literary + Media:

Stan Lee’s POW! Entertainment teams with co-creators Luke Lieberman, Ryan Silbert and Audible to develop a dramatized audio experience.

Lee, Lieberman and Silbert are developing a new long-form novel, described as “Mr. Robot” set in a John Hughes world. This new universe will be first introduced to fans by way of a richly-produced audio experience, a format Lee has always been drawn to given its roots in the tradition of narrative storytelling.

Says Lee, “When Audible came to us with the idea of doing this as an audio project first, I thought it was inspired. The story is set within a culture of cutting-edge technology, so it deserves to be brought to audiences in a medium that truly captures the spirit of the universe, yet allows the listener to create their own, unique, mental picture of the story. What Audible is doing is truly groundbreaking, but it is also bringing us back to our roots.”

“We are thrilled to bring the Stan Lee universe to life and to listeners in this unprecedented, written to the audio format endeavor with POW! Entertainment,” says Audible Chief Content Officer Andy Gaies. “The immersive audio experience will excite and exhilarate all fans of Stan Lee’s work.”

Project co-creators Ryan Silbert, producer of the Academy Award-winning film “God of Love,” and Luke Lieberman, who oversees the Red Sonja franchise, note, “The ‘what if?’ questions surrounding emerging tools and know-how are the context of our story. We aim to blend this with an accessible human narrative to deliver the experience you expect from Stan Lee — where street level heroes uncover global conflicts much bigger than they ever imagined.”