Elf Labs is unveiling itself as a new transmedia business built around its ownership of hundreds of trademarked fairytale characters in zombie form.
The Los Angeles company has an Emmy-winning production team, a seasoned branding/licensing division and it is powered by AI and compression technology, Elf Labs said. It was started (originally as Toon Studio) by Billy Phillips 15 years ago and is now run by CEO David Phillips, his son.
The aim is to transform the media industry and pioneer immersive storytelling and IP distribution, targeting everyone. It started with zombie versions of well-known characters and is now adding robot versions of them too, said David Phillips, in an interview with GamesBeat.
There will be products like a digital version of a Rapunzel 3D coloring book and such. The products will include games because they create the most immersion, Phillips said.
“We have a lot of intention behind our storylines. We have a lot of positivity and empowering messaging to people,” he said. “We want to popularize that in the most immersive aggressive way possible because we believe it will do a lot of good. So games, hard goods, online worlds, mixed reality — all of the above. And so we want to create a 360 transmedia approach across all media.”
To support these efforts, Elf Labs has secured top-tier talent and strategic partners, including Dreamworks alumnus Mike De Seve, branding industry leader Bernt Ullmann, and global technology company Cosmic Wire, which enables the company to show off its IP in a compressed file format on normal web connections.
Elf Labs has amassed a portfolio of 400 copyrights and over 140 trademarks for different zombie-based (and other) versions of beloved characters in history. Classic and reimagined renditions of Snow White, Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan, Pinocchio, and more are part of the Elf Labs IP portfolio.
The company has generated about $15 million in royalty revenue to date. It has bootstrapped its financing over the 15 years so far. Some of the company’s YouTube videos have reached more than five million views. And it sold more than 100,000 copies of a Once Upon a Zombie book. The results so far are pretty good for a firm that has just 10 people.
The strategy around intellectual property
Elf Labs’ IP strategy allows the company and its partners to monetize these brands through global consumer product licensing, including books, apparel, and more. Elf Labs achieved this feat by strategically acquiring the Junior Elf book catalog, comprising 200-plus titles featuring the world’s most timeless characters originally published by Rand McNally. The company successfully registered character trademarks at the United States Patent and Trademark Office for over a decade.
As for the potential for litigation related to copyrights, Phillips said the company is “extremely clean with all of our ownership and protections and we have a good relationship with all of our colleagues in this space.”
“Elf Labs’ platform is a multi-patented system designed to incubate, develop, and launch mega IP franchises,” added Phillips. “Combining the world’s most iconic IP with captivating creative and revolutionary technology will allow Elf Labs to truly reimagine entertainment.”
Phillips said that his father acquired the original Junior Elf children’s book portfolio 15 years ago. It dates back over 100 years and “features extremely iconic IP, hundreds of titles, hundreds of copyrights, and well-known characters. It also has lesser-known characters as well, from Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel and Pocahontas, to characters like Humpty Dumpty and Red Riding Hood. So it was a wonderful portfolio, which kickstarted the company.”
The surprising thing to me is that there is a lot of intellectual property owned by companies like Disney. But it’s a form of the characters that is derivative, or different enough in its Junior Elf form to be considered copyrightable in its own right.
“We own hundreds of copyrights for these characters. We went to the United States Patent and Trademark Office,” Phillips said. “And we started filing for trademarks on both our existing characters in the Junior Elf portfolio. And we wanted to create new worlds and reimaginings. And we wanted to reinvent the characters for modern audiences. We have really deep mythology and big worlds that we’ve built around different brands that we own.”
For example, Once Upon a Zombie features Cinderella and Snow White zombies. Robo Stars features Snow White, Cinderella and Rapunzel as AI-powered robots.
“We’ve created all these different worlds that we build a trademark-protected IP portfolio around over the years. And now we’re finally excited to bring to audiences today,” said Phillips.
In short, a zombie Peter Pan trademark is different from a Peter Pan trademark.
“Creative ideas drive our decision making on which trademarks and copyrights we want to protect our brand with we’re focused on building brands, not just characters,” Phillips said. “We ensure that we have the ability to monetize and that we are also protected because we own those treatments.”
A long stealth mode
Rather than launch right away, Phillips spent the last 15 years in stealth mode, “building an extremely valuable portfolio of intellectual property, character, IP, and creative.”
Phillips said that, since 2006 or so, the company spent a lot of money and time on the IP and trademark applications along the way, with the legal process going to the highest appeals court of the USPTO. Phillips joined the company a year ago, taking over as CEO from his father.
“Then we cascaded into building this big portfolio. So it started with our first trademark win. And then we went on to win an additional 140 trademarks and counting around our different IP brands,” he said. “The creative drove the business. We can take this creative, we can populate it, and we can protect it. Because it’s a key to protect your IP when going to market of course. Only 15 years later, we finally won enough trademarks in each IP that we’re ready to start to populate and monetize those IPs. And we put together an incredible team to do so. And so that’s what we’re launching now.”
He added, “We built this under the under the radar. We built this incredible team to create, popularize and monetize IP in a very tech-forward way. Here’s the first IP and we’re going to start launching the digital content. We’re using AI tools for the popularization of IP, for the creative behind IP, and also for the immersive experiences. In the short term, we’re going to have AI products.”
The company had early successes and it has generated millions in revenue. But it hasn’t rushed to market.
“IP and democratization of it. I’m a big fan of that. It’s the thinking of the future. That’s where it’s going, a deeper bond with your fans the IP and giving the fans more control,” he said.
“We’ve been in stealth,” he said. “It’s been intense, but positive, years of building this portfolio. And we’re, I’m chomping at the bit and very excited to bring it out to people. We think there’s a lot of good and a lot of enjoyment that will come to audiences around it. Kids get more enjoyment, more community, more positivity. That’s a real passion of ours. And that’s why we waited this long as we wanted to have the ability to do it. We didn’t want to come out too early.”
Building a company
Phillips assembled production, marketing, and technology experts to help monetize these reimagined iconic characters for modern consumers. Elf Labs’ content partners hold 31 Emmys and credits, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Madagascar, and Shrek.
Before launch, Elf Labs quietly wrote and seeded the Once Upon a Zombie book series featuring Zombie Cinderella, Zombie Rapunzel, Zombie Tinker Bell, Zombie Peter Pan, and more. Although in stealth mode, the first release sold 100,000 copies and won 12 awards, including Best YA Fiction (The Purple Dragonfly Award) and Best Juvenile Fiction (The President’s Award).
“A creative production is only as good as its storyline, and the all-star roster of characters that Elf Labs
secured has provided my team with an incredible jumping-off point,” said Mike De Seve, founder of Baboon Animation, a global animation and screenwriting collective, in a statement. “I am excited to partner with David and the team to bring innovative content to life across many media.”
Elf Labs is starting with the Robo Stars IP, featuring Robo Rapunzel, Robo Cinderella, Robo Peter Pan, Robo Pinocchio and all their friends in an AI-powered world. Elf Labs is making two seasons of Robo Stars content now and it will be producing a show. The company has also partnered with a big company in consumer product licensing.
“It’s got really captivating storylines. We have Emmy Award-winning creative behind it,” he said. “My focus in the company is to take iconic IP, world-class creative, but to bring in a technology factor. So we’re we’ve partnered with an incredible technology company, that we are going to be able to create high fidelity immersive experiences on normal browser websites.”
The launch will be global, with a focus on creating digital content and marketing it to get in front of audiences.
Beyond its character development and world-building, Elf Labs offers an integrated approach to IP distribution with the help of its technology partner, Cosmic Wire. he partnership allows the two
media companies to bridge the physical and digital realms, creating spatial worlds where audiences interact with beloved characters through seamless AR/VR experiences accessible on any device with an internet connection. Cosmic Wire also has an integrated marketing engine to democratize its characters and stories across channels.
“Cosmic Wire’s technology allows for a whole new level of immersion into IP, unlike anything that has
existed before,” said Jerad Finck, CEO of Cosmic Wire, in a statement. “Elf Labs’ willingness to push the
boundaries creatively and experientially makes them the perfect partner for us to co-create a transmedia storytelling experience.”
Elf Labs’ go-to-market strategy includes web series video content, AI-powered toys, animated and live-action feature movies, and seamlessly accessible augmented reality experiences. The company’s latest original series, RoboStars, presents a new type of hero that artfully utilizes robots like Robo Cinderella and Robo Pinocchio as a metaphor for free will, inspiring kids with the power to reject robotic reactions to internal and external challenges because we all possess the power to create proactive, positive change.
Guided by Ullmann’s decades of experience helping today’s most visionary celebrity business leaders build their brands, Elf Labs plans to execute licensing deals around its expanded character offerings to drive massive merchandise revenue.
“I have coordinated thousands of licensing deals and have never been as excited as I am to join the Elf
Labs team due to the enormous growth potential for its IP,” said Bernt Ullmann, head of licensing at Elf Labs, in a statement. “With access to some of the most monetizable character brands in history, the possibilities are endless.”
Cosmic Wire has tech to bring characters to life in a compressed format and have high-fidelity conversations on a normal website accessible with heavy-duty gaming hardware. It can take 8K data and compress it so it can go through the web easily and be accessed via a smartphone. Cosmic Wire has its own proprietary file format and compression tech.
“We’re going to have some AI-powered digital content first. AI-powered toys is something we’re very excited about. That’s going to be a key product and a key use of AI in a way that creates more immersion in an IP,” he said. “I really do believe it is a differentiator to what’s going on in the market today. And that’s one of the things we are most excited about bringing to market.”