‘Horror’ creator and writer Lauren Oliver launches media studio StoryGiants, unveils upcoming slate

Exclusive: Lauren Oliver — bestselling YA author, screenwriter, and producer known for titles such as panic And before i fall — today announced the launch of his new media company, StoryGiants, also naming the projects currently on his slate.

StoryGiants is a decentralized company with employees and partners in LA, NY, Palo Alto, Austin, Dubai and France, that will use both technological and structural innovation to improve production efficiency and scale to create powerful and engaging stories across multiple mediums. Fast great IP value.

The company is building its own library of IP at launch, which aims to introduce a universe of content with myriad expressions of media and revenue opportunities. By creating content on proprietary real-time animation and VFX technology, StoryGiants will be able to produce not only animated and live-action series, but also feature films, digital media and published works.

The company will execute every stage of story creation, from development to growth to market, employing purpose-built teams of producers, writers, publishing executives, designers, engineers, digital creators and animators for each endeavor. (Team information can be found here.)

StoryGiants follows more than a decade of work for Oliver at the Glasstown Entertainment company he founded with Lexa Hillyer. That banner allowed him to work with a variety of artists, writers, and creators, with Oliver eventually reinventing its book model and expanding it through both TV and visual media. StoryGiants merged its component business interests with Glasstown Entertainment in December last year, consolidating its projects across animation, film, television and published works under one parent company.

StoryGiants’ technology department will be led by board member, Solaiman Itani, a pioneering senior artificial intelligence software engineer who founded AR and immersive computing leader Athir in 2011. Projects in StoryGiants’ pipeline at various stages include:

Goomba Kids – an award-winning, initiative-driven, Bahamian edutainment series, Goomba Kids, created by Stephanie Nihon, is StoryGiants’ anchor children’s property and provides the first successful commercial application of StoryGiants’ VFX production technology. This is the first IP partnership to endorse the studio’s innovative entity structure and approach to content creation and media financing. Goomba Kids Phase 1 will be a hybrid live-action/animated children’s educational series, providing the basis for an expanded universe of nonfiction and fiction books as well as animated short series. Goomba Kids Goombe is executive produced by Stephanie Nihon, Rowena Poitier-Sutherland and Lauren Oliver in association with Progeny Ventures’ Colin Miles Campbell, COO of Kids Media.

Magic Show + Magic Show Book Imprint – The StoryGiants team completed principal photography in December 2022 Magic show, the first foray into niche documentation — in this case, focusing on witchcraft and modern occultism. With efficient upfront development and production costs and capital requirements, the company anticipates strong interest from distributors or acquirers for magic shows, given the strong demand among an engaged and dedicated following and fanbase for such content. Along with show creator Richard Metzger, StoryGiants will republish classic and reimagined magic works, grimoires and tarot cards through a related magic show publishing effort with a companion podcast currently in development to launch under the same entity’s supervision.

Frank APE – StoryGiants has signed a multiformat media partnership with SinesArt to create the world of New York City character Frank Epp, developed and owned by local street artist Brandon Sines. The studio is currently syndicating capital for the first phase of development and production. Phase 1 will be a high-concept graphic anthology and shortform animated digital content, with a linked NYC-based AR experience to follow.

Ecstasy Club – Based on the novel and beloved cult classic of the same name by media and technology futurist Douglas Rushkoff, ECSTASY CLUB is black mirror-fill-Excitement By Richard Linklater. StoryGiants is connected to the production and simultaneously to the work of Rushkoff to create an immersive web-3 gaming experience.

Oliver is perhaps best known for creating, writing, directing and serving as showrunner panic — Prime Video series, based on his own 2014 novel. He previously produced a film adaptation of his novel before i fallDirected by Ry Russo-Young and starring Zoey Deutch, released in 2017 by Open Road. Other works of the author include delirium Trilogy, as well as novels The Lost Girls And broken things.

Oliver and Story are repped by Giants UTA, Sugar 23 and Inkwell Management.