Cinestate Acquires Fangoria Magazine, Installs New...

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deadline.com/2018/02/fangoria-magazine-new-owner-management-1202289951/

Cinestate Acquires Fangoria Magazine, Installs New Management And Strategy

Cinestate, a Texas-based entertainment company, completed the deal to acquire all the assets and trademarks of the Fangoria brand, including the horror movie magazine, from The Brooklyn Company. Fangoria Magazine will move from digital-only back to print and a new editor-in-chief with Phil Nobile, and a new publisher with a new first issue readying to drop on Halloween.

Nobile comes to Fangoria from his role as editor-at-large for the website Birth.Movies.Death. He will be based out of New Jersey and act as the creative director for the entire Fangoria brand. Cinestate CEO Dallas Sonnier, who had pursued the deal for months, is the new publisher. As part of the arrangement, Cinestate controls all material from over 300 issues of Fangoria Magazine, which means all articles, photos, and exclusive interviews, spanning the past 39 years.

Cinestate says it will further develop Fangoria into a brand for producing movies and podcasts, as well as publishing horror novels. Cinestate VP Amanda Presmyk will head up production on a slate of Fangoria-presented horror movies that Sonnier will bring to the table for Cinestate’s new label.

Cinestate is currently in post on a gonzo reimagining of the Puppet Master franchise, as well as S. Craig Zahler’s next movie Dragged Across Concrete for Lionsgate starring Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn. Cinestate also published its first novel in January – Zahler’s Hug Chickenpenny: The Panegyric of an Anomalous Child, being developed into a feature by Zahler, Cinestate and the Jim Henson Company.

Fangoria’s previous columnists Tony Timpone and Michael Gingold are returning to the magazine with their own columns, and to consult for the company. Zack Parker, formerly of Shudder, joins Fangoria as the director of brand management, along with Jessica Safavimehr as Associate Publisher and Ashley Detmering as Art Director for the magazine.

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www.indiewire.com/2018/02/horror-magazine-fangoria-print-publication-1201929100/

Beloved Horror Magazine ‘Fangoria’ Returns to Print Publication After Unofficial Hiatus
After going dark in October of 2015, the genre mag is back, and with a full staff of gorehounds (including some returning favorites) to boot.

After an unofficial two-and-a-half year hiatus from the publication world, beloved horror magazine “Fangoria” is returning to print. Texas-based entertainment company Cinestate has acquired all the assets and trademarks of the Fangoria brand, including the magazine, from The Brooklyn Company, and now intends to begin publishing again, just in time for Halloween. The magazine has also named Birth.Movies.Death. Editor-At-Large Phil Nobile Jr. as the outlet’s Editor-in-Chief, and has revealed a number of plans for further expansion into other areas of entertainment.

The last few years have been complicated ones for the publication, which has not published a full print edition since October 2015 and has been beset by employment changes that impacted even some of its most well-known writers. In June of 2016, long-time writer (and then-Editor-in-Chief) Michael Gingold was fired from the publication after 28 years of employment. Art director Bill Mohalley was also let go at the time. Managing Editor Ken Hanley was then named Editor-in-Chief, but he reportedly left the mag in February of 2017.

Yet, today’s announcement indicates that “Fangoria” is eager to get back into business with some of his biggest stars, as both Gingold and Tony Timpone (also a former editor of the mag) will return to pen new columns for the revived publication. The mag has also announced that it’s locked in “excited commitments from contributors,” including director S. Craig Zahler, plus writers (many of them also former Fango contributors) Ashlee Blackwell, Samuel Zimmerman, Grady Hendrix, Meredith Borders, Rebekah McKendry, and Preston Fassel.

“There needs to be a Fangoria,” said Nobile in an official statement. “The magazine was a constant presence in the genre since 1979 — and then one day it was gone. That felt, to us, tragically incorrect. Fango was, for multiple generations, a privileged window into the world of horror. It gave us access to filmmakers’ processes and secrets, opened our eyes to movies we might have otherwise missed, and nurtured a wave of talent that’s out there driving the genre today. I’m proud and excited to be part of the team that’s bringing this institution back.”

In a post on B.M.D., Nobile also added that the mag “will be reborn later this year as a deluxe quarterly edition, a collectible horror film journal featuring voices both new and familiar…It will present smart, fun, exclusive horror film coverage – all in time for the magazine’s 40th anniversary next year.”

A full staff is in place and operating from the Cinestate offices in Dallas, TX. Zack Parker, formerly of Shudder, joins Fangoria as the Director of Brand Management, along with Jessica Safavimehr as Associate Publisher and Ashley Detmering as Art Director. Nobile will be based out of New Jersey.

As part of the arrangement, Cinestate now “controls all material from over 300 issues of Fangoria Magazine, including articles, photos, and exclusive interviews, spanning the past 39 years. The contents of the now-infamous Fangoria storage unit in New York, a veritable treasure trove of horror history collected over decades by former staff, has arrived at the Cinestate offices to be sorted and cataloged.”

Added Cinestate CEO Dallas Sonnier, “We are fully committed to restoring faith in Fangoria with the horror fan community, so many of whom bought subscriptions, but never received their magazines. We have also been reaching out to previous Fangoria contributors to introduce ourselves and invite them back into the tent for future collaborations. This is a process, but we are confident in our ability to earn back trust and be good partners in a brand that personally means so much to so many awesome people.”

The Fangoria website has not published new material since the end of January, but its full archives are available here.

Per today’s press release, “Sonnier was able to complete the Fangoria asset acquisition and fuel growth in Cinestate by raising over $5 million of investment for his company. The primary investor in Cinestate is a member of a prominent Texas family that wishes to remain anonymous. As part of the deal, Cinestate also acquired the assets and trademarks to out-of-print publications ‘Starlog’ and ‘Gorezone.'”

Additionally, “Cinestate will further develop Fangoria into a brand for producing movies and podcasts, as well as publishing horror novels. Cinestate VP Amanda Presmyk will head up production on a slate of Fangoria-presented horror movies that Sonnier will bring to the table for Cinestate’s new label.”

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icv2.com/articles/news/view/39648/fangoria-back-dead

'FANGORIA' BACK FROM THE DEAD
Returning to Print in Time for Halloween
Posted by Betsy Gomez on February 15, 2018 @ 5:34 pm CT

Fangoria Magazine is headed back to print thanks to the witchcraft of Texas-based entertainment company Cinestate, which recently acquired all assets and trademarks for the brand from The Brooklyn Company. The first issue of the resurrected horror magazine is set to drop this fall, just in time for Halloween.
Cinestate CEO Dallas Sonnier has taken on the role of Publisher. He hired Phil Nobile Jr. as Editor-in-Chief of Fangoria Magazine and Creative Director for the entire brand. Nobile had previously been Editor-At Large for Birth.Movies.Death. Cinestate has plans to develop Fangoria into a brand for producing movies, podcasts, and horror novels.

As part of the deal, Cinestate also obtained the rights to the material from the more than 300 issues of Fangoria that were published over the last 39 years. The deal also includes assets from out-of-print genre magazines Starlog and Gorezone.

Popular Fangoria contributors Tony Timpone and Michael Gingold will be returning to the fold with their own columns and as consultants. S. Craig Zahler (Brawl in Cell Block 99), Ashlee Blackwell (Graveyard Shift Sisters), Samuel Zimmerman (Curator, Shudder), Grady Hendrix (Paperbacks From Hell), Meredith Borders (former Editorial Director of Birth.Movies.Death.), Rebekah McKendry (academic and horror historian), and Preston Fassel (Our Lady of the Inferno) have also made commitments to the reborn publication.

Fangoria released its last print issue in October 2015, and the company spent the next couple of years shambling toward the grave.

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icv2.com/articles/news/view/36752/fango-shambling-towards-grave

'FANGO' SHAMBLING TOWARDS THE GRAVE
Future Print Issues in Question
Posted by Milton Griepp on February 14, 2017 @ 3:11 pm CT

The progenitor of a new breed of horror fandom, Fangoria may now be at the end of its life in print. A series of Tweets by Ken Hanley, its most recent editor-in-chief, announced that he’s no longer involved with the magazine and pessimistic about its future. “For those wondering; there will likely never be another issue of Fangoria, especially in print, unless there’s new ownership,” he wrote. Hanley revealed that he hadn’t been involved with the magazine since mid-December.
Fangoria management responded with a post on its website, which acknowledged problems in paying its creative talent, but vowed to continue. “[W]e will be working endlessly to make good on any funds owed for magazines and/or articles written,” the statement said. “In the meantime, we’ll continue trying to conquer the uphill battle to restore our print issues that our fans urgently long for.”

The company’s problems originated with a decline in advertising for the print editions of the magazine, the statement said, which created “…a domino effect that spread throughout staff, writers, artists, subscribers, and even to our President as well.”

Founded in 1979 by the publisher of Starlog and converted to a horror theme shortly thereafter, Fangoria focused on special effects and makeup in horror films, and often pushed the limits of gore, a strategy that quickly built a rabid fan base tired of the more restrained approach of magazines like Famous Monsters of Filmland.

Current ownership dates to 2009, when Creative Group, which acquired the Starlog brands in 2005, went bankrupt and The Brooklyn Company, run by longtime Fangoria President Thomas DeFeo, took over the properties (see “’Starlog’ Ends Long Run”).

A statement from DeFeo was included in the Fangoria announcement. “I’d like to thank readers and subscribers for their patience as we deal with our internal issues,” he wrote. “We will carry forward and devote our efforts to make amends with all that have been inconvenienced in our current state of affairs.”

The last print issue of the magazine was released in October 2015.