Animoca Brands announces global licensing deal with Coolabi Group

ASX Release - 09 April 2018

Animoca Brands announces global licensing deal with Coolabi Group to make Beast Quest mobile game

Highlights

Animoca Brands and Coolabi sign agreement to develop a mobile game based on the children’s fantasy novels franchise Beast Quest
Beast Quest is a highly popular series of children’s fantasy novels, with 120 published titles and over 18 million copies sold to date
Coolabi will make payments to Animoca Brands to fund part of the production and distribution of the game
The new mobile game will leverage technology and game play from the highly successful Crazy Kings and Crazy Defense Heroes mobile games

Animoca Brands Corporation Limited (ASX:AB1, “the Company”) is pleased to announce that it has signed an agreement (“the Agreement”) with Coolabi Licensing Limited (“Coolabi”) to grant the Company a worldwide sub-licensable license to develop and publish a mobile game based on the highly popular franchise Beast Quest.

The Agreement is effective immediately and valid for a period of three years starting from the date of the first full commercial release of the new game, which the Company expects to occur in early 2019.

Under the Agreement, Animoca Brands and Coolabi will co-invest in the production and distribution of a new mobile game based on Beast Quest. During the development period and up to the launch of the new game, Coolabi will be a commercial and production partner, contributing to the game’s development costs. After launch, Coolabi will collect 100% of net revenue from the new game until it has recouped 50% of its license and production costs. Thereafter, the two companies will share revenue from the game on a 50/50 basis.

Beast Quest is one of the best-selling series of children’s fantasy novels, highly popular with boys aged seven years and older. It is produced by Working Partners Limited, a Coolabi Group company, and includes 120 titles, with 10 or more new titles published every year. The series has been translated into over 30 languages and sold over 18 million books.

Adam Blade, the author of Beast Quest, was the seventh most borrowed author overall and the fifth most borrowed children’s author in libraries across the U.K. for the period of July 2015 to June 2016 (the latest data available from the British Library PLR office).

The game playstyle and technology from the Company’s highly successful tower defense and collectible card fantasy mobile games Crazy Kings and Crazy Defense Heroes will be leveraged to develop the new game based on the characters and stories of the Beast Quest franchise.

Today’s news follows the recent launch of Crazy Defense Heroes in the Americas and Europe and allows the Company to access a large and captive new audience. The Company will continue to pursue licensing deals to leverage the successful gameplay and technology of its products, and looks forward to updating the market in due course.

Yat Siu, co-founder and director of Animoca Brands, commented: “We are thrilled by the opportunity to work on a powerfully appealing brand like Beast Quest, and we look forward to bringing the fun and challenging gameplay of the Crazy Kings franchise to a wider audience. We will work closely with Coolabi to develop an engaging mobile game for all the loyal fans of Beast Quest around the world.”

Jeremy Banks, Chief Executive of Coolabi Group, added: “Coolabi are relishing the opportunity to work alongside the team at Animoca Brands. The Crazy Kings franchise is already proving its success in the mobile game market, and Coolabi are excited to merge the rich storytelling and compelling characters from the Beast Quest universe to create the next thrilling iteration for game players globally.”

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About Animoca Brands
Animoca Brands (ASX: AB1) publishes globally a broad portfolio of mobile games and subscription products including several games and e-books based on popular intellectual properties such as Garfield, Thomas & Friends™, Ever After High and Doraemon. The Company is based in Hong Kong and Finland. For more information visit www.animocabrands.com or get updates by following Animoca Brands on Facebook, Twitter or Google +.

About Beast Quest

Beast Quest is the internationally popular fiction book series by Adam Blade for 7-10-year-olds, published by Orchard Books. The books have sold over 18 million copies globally across 100+ titles and have been translated into over 30 languages.

In 2017, as the series celebrated its 10th Anniversary, Working Partners, a Coolabi Group company, announced a new deal with Orchard Books (Hachette) to continue publishing through to 2026.

The series focuses on friendship, heroism, fantasy and adventure across a far-reaching, epic and multi-layered narrative. Children relate to the central characters of Tom and Elenna as they battle against dark forces of magic and, of course, Beasts!

The Beast Quest gaming app, co-produced by Coolabi and Miniclip for iOS, Android and Windows Phone, has already achieved over 10 million global downloads and continues to attract several hundred thousand new downloads every month. The mobile game featured on iTunes “Best New Game” in over 120 countries.

Further brand extension includes a deal with top 15 global video game publisher Maximum Games to develop a Beast Quest console game for Xbox One and PlayStation 4, which was released in March 2018.

For more information, please visit: www.beast-quest.com

About Coolabi Group

Coolabi Group is a leading independent international media group and rights owner specialising in the creation, development and brand management of children’s and family intellectual property rights.

The Group, made up of Coolabi and Working Partners, has particular expertise in the media of book, television and in the management and growth of its brands. The Group creates original series fiction for publishers and has crafted well over 100 published series, consisting of some 1,600 books, sold in more than 40 languages. Warriors, Beast Quest, Animal Ark and Rainbow Magic, have each sold well over ten million copies.

Coolabi also owns the rights in over 20 TV series and over 400 half-hours of programming; its series have aired in more than 140 territories on channels including: ABC, Amazon, Cartoon Network, CBeebies, CBBC, Cartoon Network, Clan / TVE, Disney, France 5, CITV, Kika, Netflix, Nickelodeon and Sprout. Brands include the multi-award-winning remake of Clangers, which airs on CBeebies, Scream Street, shown on CBBC and Poppy Cat (Milkshake).

For more information, please visit: www.coolabi.com