DGAP-News: Bastei Lübbe AG and Imperative Entertainment Found Joint Venture 'Bastei LLC.'


DGAP-News: Bastei Lübbe AG / Key word(s): Joint Venture
Bastei Lübbe AG and Imperative Entertainment Found Joint Venture
'Bastei LLC.'

16.09.2014 / 18:15

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Bastei Lübbe AG and Imperative Entertainment Found Joint Venture "Bastei
LLC."

Cologne / Los Angeles, 16 September 2014. Media corporate Bastei Lübbe AG
and Imperative Entertainment, a multi-platform entertainment studio based
in the USA, have announced the founding of a joint venture. The subsidiary,
to be named Bastei LLC., will bundle their international activities with
greater efficiency and allow penetration into a greater range of media. The
corresponding agreements have been signed on 12 September in Los Angeles.

Thomas Schierack, CEO of Bastei Lübbe AG, said of the agreement: "We're
very pleased to be taking the next logical step in our cooperation with
Imperative Entertainment. After all, our new US media partner and its
executives have made an impressive case in recent years about effective and
successful ways to work with good material across various levels of the
media business, including in Hollywood".

Cologne-based Bastei Lübbe AG, which is listed on the Frankfurt Exchange's
Prime Standard segment, and its partner from Los Angeles, California, have
already been working together for some time. The new venture will bring the
two firms even closer. Their stated goal: bundling the publishing expertise
at Bastei Lübbe, especially in the print and digital areas, and the
company's strong innovative power in the area of new media together with
the experience of Imperative Entertainment in the area of international
film, television, and entertainment. The companies see a strong basis of
promising material to develop together for international marketing in
English and other languages. The joint venture allows both sides to work
with authors, screenwriters, directors and media companies to develop
completely new intellectual properties (IPs) for media including film, TV
and the games market. Inaugural projects for the joint venture include:

  - CAPITAL GAINS -- A family drama set against the high-stakes world of
    private equity and corporate raiders, where ruthless billionaire Bruce
    Warren will do whatever it takes to land the biggest deal of his
    storied career, even if it means tearing apart his own family.

  - PENDULUM -- A frenetic, heart-pounding thriller about the unlikely
    group of people who find themselves at the center of a violent
    conspiracy with the potential to upend western democracy.

  - GRAVES -- An elevated series about the relationship between a first
    grade teacher who moonlights as a sociopathic serial killer and the
    tortured FBI agent on her tail.

  - THE BAY -  When his daughter is kidnapped, a straight-laced San
    Francisco cop and his corrupt detective brother who must put aside bad
    blood to scour the ganglands of the the Bay's seedy underbelly for her
    captors.

The new joint venture will open up completely new perspectives for both
sides: "Imperative is working with the same approach that Bastei Lübbe has
been pursuing for almost six decades and which we've continuously expanded
to include new elements in recent years: offering good stories across
multiple channels. Our close collaboration will allow us to blend the two
success models, optimising them together," explains Felix Rudloff, CCO at
Bastei Lübbe AG.

The team at Imperative Entertainment includes Tim Kring, creator of the
popular American TV show Heroes, film and TV producers Bradley Thomas and
Zak Kadison and successful entrepreneur Dan Friedkin. The California
company specialises in the development, implementation and financing of
various entertainment media, including feature films, TV productions, video
games, comics, books and new media. Its founders boast over one and a half
billion dollars in cinema box office receipts and many years of experience
in the production of TV material.

Bastei Lübbe and Imperative Entertainment will each hold a 50 percent share
in the new company. The agreement was signed by both parties today.

More information under www.bastei.us.


About Bastei Lübbe AG:
Bastei Lübbe AG is a media company organised around its publishing venture.
The Cologne-based company currently has around 335 employees. It publishes
books, audio books, ebooks and digital products in both the literary and
popular science genres, as well as serialised novels and puzzle magazines.
Bastei Lübbe is also actively involved in brand licensing and the
development, production and distribution of gift, decoration and
merchandising articles. Bastei Lübbe has for many years enjoyed an almost
unbroken streak as the market leader in the growing segment of hard-cover
literature; in 2013 its literary ebooks division was also ranked number one
on the market. 2013 saw the company's 60th anniversary celebration and its
launch as a publicly traded company. Shares of Bastei Lübbe AG are listed
in the Prime Standard segment of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (WKN A1X3YY,
ISIN DE000A1X3YY0).

About Imperative Entertainment:
Imperative Entertainment (http://www.imperativeentertainment.com) is a
next-generation entertainment studio focused on the development, production
and financing of feature films, TV formats, computer games, books, comics
and digital content. Imperative was found in 2014 by Tim Kring, Bradley
Thomas, Zak Kadison and Dan Friedkin, an seasoned and experiened team of
entertainment and media makers with more than 1.5 billion dollars in box
office receipts and years of experience in the production of popular TV
formats.

Contact for Bastei Lübbe AG:
Barbara Fischer
Director of PR and 
Event Marketing
Tel.: +49 (0) 221 / 82 00 28 50
Email: barbara.fischer@luebbe.de



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16.09.2014 Dissemination of a Corporate News, transmitted by DGAP - a
service of EQS Group AG.
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

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Language:    English                                                
Company:     Bastei Lübbe AG                                        
             Schanzenstraße 6 - 20                                  
             51063 Köln                                             
             Germany                                                
Phone:       02 21 / 82 00 - 0                                      
Fax:         02 21 / 82 00 - 1900                                   
E-mail:      investorrelations@luebbe.de                            
Internet:    www.luebbe.de                                          
ISIN:        DE000A1X3YY0, DE000A1K0169                             
WKN:         A1X3YY, A1K016                                         
Listed:      Regulierter Markt in Frankfurt (Prime Standard);       
             Freiverkehr in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Hannover,  
             Stuttgart                                              
 
 
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