‘The Beauty’ Shows Ignition Press Is Serious About Its Comics-To-Media Pipeline

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a new comics publisher launches a line of action, horror, sci-fi or other genre titles from established pros on the promise that this new IP, developed in a low cost, low risk visual medium, will attract the attention of Hollywood producers. Option, pilot, series and voila! Everyone is making money from the next The Walking Dead! It’s a formula that works just often enough that people keep trying it, but as the years go by and the streaming landscape becomes more challenging to navigate, the unreliability of this business plan has become almost a cliché within the comics publishing industry.

Ignition Press, which launched last year, wants to be the exception that proves the rule. And the early results suggest they might have cracked the code. On Wednesday, The Beauty, a hotly anticipated new high-tech thriller series featuring Evan Peters, Ashton Kutcher and Jeremy Pope, will debut on FX and Hulu. It is the first of several projects slated for 2026 release spearheaded by the new imprint and its production arm. Whether you believe this is beginners’ luck or the template for repeatable success, getting multiple series produced and on screen less than 18 months after forming the company is a record a lot of established publishers would envy.

According to Ignition’s founders, this was all part of the plan. The key is having established production experience baked in at the start.

“The mindset of a lot of comics publishers is, ‘if we publish it, they [Hollywood] will come,’” said Eric Gitter, longtime producer (Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Atomic Blonde, Extraction), cofounder and CEO of Ignition Press, in a phone interview earlier this month. “Conversely, you have producers who don’t know what went into the books because they weren’t vested in the creators. That leads to a lot of dysfunctional marriages. At Ignition, we have both sides working together. Knowing how to navigate the waters of Hollywood and knowing how to package material so you’re not sending it out into the world blind is a huge advantage for us.”

Ignition Press brings Gitter together with three comic industry veterans: former Boom! Studios, Top Cow and Diamond executive Filip Sablik (publisher), longtime DC/Vertigo and IDW editor Jamie S. Rich (editor-in-chief), and writer/artist Jeremy Haun (creative director). Gitter and Haun had been working together for years, trying to get The Beauty, which Haun created in 2016 with Jason A. Hurley and originally published at Image Comics, adapted into a series. Sablik signed on shortly after Boom! Studios was acquired by Penguin Random House in 2024.

“Comics publishing and production are both very complex, hard businesses to be successful at,” said Sablik. “Part of our x-factor is we have four partners who are really experienced and know what they’re doing. Our pipeline is built; we have things in production. We can confidently say there is something to back this up other than hopes and dreams.”

In addition to The Beauty, which is coproduced by Matthew Hodgson and Ryan Murphy, Ignition is also working to expand the story world of the Extraction franchise, originally created by Joe and Anthony Russo with Ande Parks. A series, Mercenary: An Extraction Story, has wrapped production and is slated for release later this year helmed by showrunner Glen Mazzara, executive producers including the Russo Brothers, and Omar Sy playing the lead. Extraction: TYGO, a spinoff film set and shot in South Korea, is in production at Netflix. Ignition Press is bringing back the original Extraction graphic novel, Ciudad, written by Parks, illustrated by Fernando León González, with new colors by Ronda Pattinson, and launching a brand new Extraction comic series called “Beginnings” by Parks and artist Ronan Cliquet, launching in April.

Gitter also mentioned that another Jeremy Haun title, The Leading Man (co-created with B. Clay Moore) is being developed as a feature film at Netflix with John Cena and Kevin Hart attached.

The founders admit that all of these projects were already moving forward when the company started, based on pre-existing creator-owned properties published elsewhere in the industry. Depending on how contracts are structured, creators sometimes have the option to move those books to other publishers and shop their media rights independently. But Sablik says the plan for the future is to closely integrate Ignition’s original publishing projects with the established production pipeline.

“It was always part of the company to hit the ground running with media because success begets success,” he said. “We knew we had a bunch of these going in. So we made them a center part of the company because these are creators we knew we wanted to work with. There are two new projects we are currently packaging, which we expect to happen in the next couple of months. It’s a matter of trying to deliver for the creators as part of the rights deal, which is an important part of the business for me.”

Gitter agrees that creator participation is another way Ignition is trying to differentiate from others pushing the same comics-to-media strategy. “We’re not some outside producer who came in and gobbled up the books. We want to work with the creators and hear what their thoughts are. And that empowers us when talking to Hollywood, whether it’s showrunners, screenwriters or directors. We can protect the creator’s visions a bit more and match up the talent to help facilitate success.”

Sablik is quick to point out that the media pipeline provides some enhanced revenue opportunities, but the publishing side of the business is also a priority. The company secured direct market and trade book distribution through Penguin Random House. Public market data is scarce, but Sablik says the company’s launch title, Murder Podcast, as well as a relaunched The Beauty, are both performing well according to internal metrics.

Both Gitter and Sablik say that in a market where there are a lot of publishing options for creator-owned projects, especially ones built with media expansion in mind, that Ignition’s traction will be a differentiator.

“It’s early days,” says Sablik, “but we’ve been very deliberate, very thoughtful about how we roll things out. We want people to enjoy the steak, not get excited about the sizzle.”