EXCLUSIVE: The American Play Firm, most just lately led by Oscar-winning actor Michael Douglas and his enterprise companion, Mark Shankman, is being acquired by the theatrical division of Worldwide Literary Companions.
With roots relationship to the Eighties, APC was as soon as an company representing purchasers like George Bernard Shaw, Jerome Kern and J.M. Barrie. It went on to manage the estates of Damon Runyon, whose writing shaped the idea of Broadway musical Guys & Dolls; and Cornell Woolrich, whose story “It Needed to Be Homicide” was the supply of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie Rear Window. APC additionally has a stake within the estates of authors together with Maurine Dallas Watkins, who wrote the 1926 play which impressed the Broadway musical Chicago.
“Mark and I are so excited for this subsequent nice chapter for APC and its catalog of iconic literary legacies,” Douglas stated. “We sit up for working with Michael and the complete staff at ILP as they proceed and increase upon the corporate’s storytelling legacy.”
ILP Theatrical CEO Michael Barra described the works in APC’s catalog as “integral to the material of the American theater.” Alluding to ILP Chairman Thomas B. McGrath, he continued, “We’re thrilled to not solely be entering into the function of steward for such literary luminaries, but in addition to be working with Michael Douglas and Mark Shankman on this assortment of classics going ahead.”
ILP invests in, acquires, manages, and enhances literary and theatrical estates. Its theatrical division was based and led by Barra and McGrath. With workplaces in New York, London, Los Angeles and Austin, ILP works carefully with e book authors, playwrights, lyricists and composers, together with their representatives, heirs and property managers.
Since its founding in 2020, ILP has constructed a various portfolio of iconic creators, together with Somerset Maugham, Langston Hughes, Alfred Uhry, Ann Rule, Georges Simenon, James M. Cain, Joseph Kesselring, Georgette Heyer, Ngaio Marsh, Mary Wesley, and Arto Paasilinna. ILP companions with main creatives and media producers to develop new diversifications throughout publishing, tv, movie, theatre, and digital platforms.
American Play Firm was based by Elisabeth Marbury in 1914. After years of success as agent to many literary luminaries equivalent to Shaw, Barrie, Edmond Rostand, Rachel Crothers, G.M. Cohan, Jerome Kern, and P.G. Wodehouse, she merged her firm with Selwyn & Co. By 1930, the APC was an amalgam of such legacy corporations as Selwyn & Co, Elisabeth Marbury, Inc., The John Rumsey Play Firm, and The De Mille Firm.
Within the early Nineteen Sixties, the corporate was bought and led by legendary producer Sheldon Abend till 1999, when it was acquired by Douglas to develop properties for movie and tv. Abend was often known as an mental property rights pioneer. He argued in a Supreme Court docket case that widows and heirs of deceased authors ought to have the unique proper to allow the creation and exploitation of spinoff works, no matter doubtlessly conflicting agreements by prior copyright holders.
In 2019, Mark Shankman grew to become Douglas’ companion and has overseen the catalog’s function in such initiatives as Chicago, the longest-running American musical on Broadway and the latest hit revival of Guys & Dolls on the Bridge Theatre in London. The corporate additionally has been concerned within the just lately introduced movie remake of Guys & Dolls from Sony’s TriStar Photos, with Rob Marshall hooked up to direct.
