Bastei Lübbe AG and Imperative Entertainment Found Joint Venture 'Bastei LLC.'

Bastei Lübbe AG and Imperative Entertainment Found Joint Venture "Bastei LLC."

Cologne / Los Angeles, 16 September 2014. Media corporate Bastei Lübbe AG and Imperative Entertainment, a multi-platform entertainment studio based in the USA, have announced the founding of a joint venture. The subsidiary, to be named Bastei LLC., will bundle their international activities with greater efficiency and allow penetration into a greater range of media. The corresponding agreements have been signed on 12 September in Los Angeles.

Thomas Schierack, CEO of Bastei Lübbe AG, said of the agreement: "We're very pleased to be taking the next logical step in our cooperation with Imperative Entertainment. After all, our new US media partner and its executives have made an impressive case in recent years about effective and successful ways to work with good material across various levels of the media business, including in Hollywood".

Cologne-based Bastei Lübbe AG, which is listed on the Frankfurt Exchange's Prime Standard segment, and its partner from Los Angeles, California, have already been working together for some time. The new venture will bring the two firms even closer. Their stated goal: bundling the publishing expertise at Bastei Lübbe, especially in the print and digital areas, and the company's strong innovative power in the area of new media together with the experience of Imperative Entertainment in the area of international film, television, and entertainment. The companies see a strong basis of promising material to develop together for international marketing in English and other languages. The joint venture allows both sides to work with authors, screenwriters, directors and media companies to develop completely new intellectual properties (IPs) for media including film, TV and the games market. Inaugural projects for the joint venture include:

- CAPITAL GAINS -- A family drama set against the high-stakes world of private equity and corporate raiders, where ruthless billionaire Bruce Warren will do whatever it takes to land the biggest deal of his storied career, even if it means tearing apart his own family.

- PENDULUM -- A frenetic, heart-pounding thriller about the unlikely group of people who find themselves at the center of a violent conspiracy with the potential to upend western democracy.

- GRAVES -- An elevated series about the relationship between a first grade teacher who moonlights as a sociopathic serial killer and the tortured FBI agent on her tail.

- THE BAY - When his daughter is kidnapped, a straight-laced San Francisco cop and his corrupt detective brother who must put aside bad blood to scour the ganglands of the the Bay's seedy underbelly for her captors.

The new joint venture will open up completely new perspectives for both sides: "Imperative is working with the same approach that Bastei Lübbe has been pursuing for almost six decades and which we've continuously expanded to include new elements in recent years: offering good stories across multiple channels. Our close collaboration will allow us to blend the two success models, optimising them together," explains Felix Rudloff, CCO at Bastei Lübbe AG.

The team at Imperative Entertainment includes Tim Kring, creator of the popular American TV show Heroes, film and TV producers Bradley Thomas and Zak Kadison and successful entrepreneur Dan Friedkin. The California company specialises in the development, implementation and financing of various entertainment media, including feature films, TV productions, video games, comics, books and new media. Its founders boast over one and a half billion dollars in cinema box office receipts and many years of experience in the production of TV material.

Bastei Lübbe and Imperative Entertainment will each hold a 50 percent share in the new company. The agreement was signed by both parties today.

More information under www.bastei.us.

About Bastei Lübbe AG:
Bastei Lübbe AG is a media company organised around its publishing venture. The Cologne-based company currently has around 335 employees. It publishes books, audio books, ebooks and digital products in both the literary and popular science genres, as well as serialised novels and puzzle magazines. Bastei Lübbe is also actively involved in brand licensing and the development, production and distribution of gift, decoration and merchandising articles. Bastei Lübbe has for many years enjoyed an almost unbroken streak as the market leader in the growing segment of hard-cover literature; in 2013 its literary ebooks division was also ranked number one on the market. 2013 saw the company's 60th anniversary celebration and its launch as a publicly traded company. Shares of Bastei Lübbe AG are listed in the Prime Standard segment of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (WKN A1X3YY, ISIN DE000A1X3YY0).

About Imperative Entertainment:
Imperative Entertainment (http://www.imperativeentertainment.com) is a next-generation entertainment studio focused on the development, production and financing of feature films, TV formats, computer games, books, comics and digital content. Imperative was found in 2014 by Tim Kring, Bradley Thomas, Zak Kadison and Dan Friedkin, an seasoned and experiened team of entertainment and media makers with more than 1.5 billion dollars in box office receipts and years of experience in the production of popular TV formats.

Contact for Bastei Lübbe AG:
Barbara Fischer
Director of PR and
Event Marketing
Tel.: +49 (0) 221 / 82 00 28 50
Email: barbara.fischer@luebbe.de