Cartoon Brew’s view: Rogers’ story is one of the few happy endings to come from last year’s WBD culling of animated films and series. There are dozens of other creators who still have no legal means of continuing the work they poured their hearts and souls into and wrapping up the stories they were in the middle of telling. If we’re lucky, maybe Rogers’ is just the first such story, and other creators will be given similar opportunities.
[embedded content]
In the video, Rogers explained that last week, after two years of him and his team pushing for it, Warner Bros. Discovery gave him the licensing rights to make one Final Space graphic novel in which he can wrap up the narrative of his cult favorite animated series.
Final Space creator Olan Rogers posted an emotional Youtube video this morning, announcing that he will self-publish a graphic novel conclusion to his sci-fi animated series Final Space.
“Honestly when I read this I don’t see the restrictions, I see the possibilities,” Rogers said after going through the list.
- Rogers is not allowed to crowdfund the book. He can only self-finance, although he is allowed to accept preorders.
- The book can only be sold on a website owned by Rogers. That means it won’t be available on Amazon or any other third-party marketplace.
- It must be self-published.
- Rogers is only allowed to produce and distribute hard copies of the book, no digital copies are allowed.
- No animation, no voices.
- Rogers cannot produce or release other Final Space books after this one. At least not under the terms of the current deal.
“This deal was a take-it-or-leave-it kinda deal, it was non-negotiable, so I took it,” Rogers explained before diving into the strict guidelines under which WBD will allow him to produce, publish, and distribute the book.
Under the terms of the one-off deal:
Because he will be doing the heavy lifting on this project alone, Rogers says it will likely take him over a year to finish. With so much story to wrap up, he’s predicting the book could exceed 500 pages and has given himself until mid-late-2024 to finish putting it together and begin shipping orders.
“I wanna wrap everything up in this thing. I have to. If I’m gonna have one graphic novel, I’m gonna make it a big one,” he said, promising that he will also sign every copy sold.
