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Cabinet Entertainment, previously known as Paradox Entertainment, is a company dealing in intellectual properties and making motion pictures thereof. All business is conducted from the main office in Los Angeles, United States. The company was founded in 2015 by CEO Fredrik Malmberg, previously co-founder of Swedish role-playing game publishing house Target Games and CEO of Paradox Entertainment.
Some of its most famous holdings are trademarks and certain rights related to Conan the Barbarian, a character created by pulp author Robert E. Howard and expanded upon by many other authors over the years. Cabinet owns these rights through Conan Properties International, a wholly owned subsidiary. Other properties held by Cabinet Entertainment include Bran Mak Morn, Kull, Solomon Kane, Mutant, Mutant Chronicles, Warzone, Kult, and Chronopia. Former licences include Heavy Gear.
Paradox Entertainment started out in 1999, [1] created from the bankrupted Target Games (known at that time as "Target Games Interactive"), a Swedish role-playing games company. [2]
In 2004, the company moved its business to Los Angeles. At this time, the Stockholm operation was spun off into Paradox Interactive. [2]
Paradox Entertainment claims that the company owns the rights to all of Robert E. Howard's stories and characters.
On August 21, 2011, the day the 2011 film Conan the Barbarian opened, SLMI (Stan Lee Media Inc.) unsuccessfully sued [3] Paradox Entertainment, Conan Sales Co., Arthur Lieberman, and others over the rights to Conan, as they claim Conan was improperly transferred to Conan Sales Co. and sold to Paradox. [4]
In 2012, rights for Conan movie sequels reverted from Millennium Films Inc. to Conan Properties International, a wholly owned subsidiary of Paradox Entertainment. [5]
In 2015, Cabinet Entertainment, a new company of CEO Fredrik Malmberg (through Cabinet Holdings), acquired Paradox Entertainment Inc. and all subsidiaries and their properties, including the Robert E. Howard properties Conan, Kull, and Solomon Kane, as well as the original Target/Paradox properties Mutant Chronicles/Warzone, Kult, Chronopia, and Mutant. The purchase price for all shares in PEINC amounted to $7 million in cash. [6] [7] [8]
In April 2018, Cabinet joined with video game publisher Funcom to set up Heroic Signatures, an outfit intended to develop Cabinet's intellectual properties into video games. [9]
In September 2020, it was announced that Netflix will develop a new Conan TV series as a part of a larger deal involving Fredrik Malmberg and Mark Wheeler from Pathfinder Media [note 1] between Netflix and Conan Properties International, owned by Cabinet Entertainment, for the exclusive rights to their Conan library for the rights for live-action and animated films and TV shows. [10]
In September 2021, Funcom acquired Cabinet Group, the parent company to Cabinet Entertainment. Funcom, which had already developed and published games based on intellectual properties under license from Cabinet, planned to continue to expand on these properties with the acquisition. [11] Cabinet founder Fredrik Malmberg will become president of Heroic Signatures. [12]
Cabinet Entertainment used to be publicly listed in Stockholm, Sweden. The company called Paradox Entertainment listed on OMX Nasdaq is now called Sensori AB and dealt in medical supplies, [13] until it entered into liquidation on 31 August 2020. [14] Specifically, Paradox Entertainment AB (the Swedish, listed, company) sold off all its operations to Paradox Entertainment Inc. (its American subsidiary). The Swedish company acquired its new medical operations by buying Akloma Tinnitus AB and changing its name, while the American company was purchased by its previous CEO Fredrik Malmberg through Cabinet. [15]
Paradox Interactive, based in Stockholm, is a completely separate entity, no longer a part of Paradox Entertainment.
Conan is licensed to Modiphius. [16] Kult is licensed to Helmgast. [17] Mutant is licensed to Free League. [18]
Includes producer and executive producer credits for Cabinet CEO, Fredrik Malmberg. [19]
Conan the Barbarian is a fictional sword and sorcery hero who originated in pulp magazines and has since been adapted to books, comics, films, television programs, video games, and role-playing games. Robert E. Howard created the character in 1932 for a series of fantasy stories published in Weird Tales magazine.
Kult is a contemporary horror role-playing game originally created by Gunilla Jonsson and Michael Petersén with illustrations by Nils Gulliksson, first published in Sweden by Äventyrsspel in 1991. Kult is notable for its philosophical and religious depth as well as for its mature and controversial content.
Drakar och Demoner also known as Dragonbane, is a Swedish fantasy role-playing game first published in 1982 by the game publishing company Äventyrsspel.
Funcom Oslo AS is a Norwegian video game developer and publisher that specializes in online games. It is best known for the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) titles Conan Exiles, Age of Conan, Anarchy Online, The Secret World – and The Longest Journey series of adventure games. The company has offices in Oslo, Norway; North Carolina, US; Lisbon, Portugal; Bucharest, Romania; and Stockholm, Sweden. It also had offices in Beijing, Dublin, and Montreal previously. It is now owned by the Chinese media conglomerate Tencent.
Solomon Kane is a fictional character created by the pulp-era writer Robert E. Howard. A late-16th-to-early-17th century Puritan, Solomon Kane is a somber-looking man who wanders the world with no apparent goal other than to vanquish evil in all its forms. His adventures, published mostly in the pulp magazine Weird Tales, often take him from Europe to the jungles of Africa and back.
Target Games was a Swedish publisher of role-playing games active from 1980 until the year 1999 when they went into bankruptcy proceedings. Until the mid-1990s they published their Swedish roleplaying games under the brand name Äventyrsspel.
Paradox Interactive AB is a video game publisher based in Stockholm, Sweden. The company started out as the video game division of Target Games and then Paradox Entertainment before being spun out into an independent company in 2004. Through a combination of expanding internal studios, founding new studios and purchasing independent developers, the company has grown to comprise nine first-party development studios, including their flagship Paradox Development Studio, and acts as publisher for games from other developers.
Age of Conan: Unchained is a fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Funcom and published by Eidos Interactive for Microsoft Windows in 2008. Age of Conan is the first installment in the planned Age of Conan series. Age of Conan takes place within the continent of the Hyborian kingdoms, a year after the events depicted in Robert E. Howard's Conan novel The Hour of the Dragon.
Mutant is a series of Swedish role-playing games that were developed and published by Target Games using their Äventyrsspel brand. The current version is developed by Fria Ligan under license by Cabinet Entertainment and published in Swedish and English by Fria Ligan and Modiphius respectively. A video game adaptation named Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden was released December 2018.
Mutant Chronicles is a pen-and-paper role-playing game set in a post-apocalyptic world, originally published in 1993. It has spawned a franchise of collectible card games, miniature wargames, video games, novels, comic books, and a film of the same title based on the game world.
Warzone is a tabletop miniature wargame based on the Mutant Chronicles universe and role-playing game. It features squad-based combat at a skirmish level, although vehicles and large models were introduced in later supplements to the main rule book.
Stan Lee Media (SLM) was an Internet-based creation, production and marketing company that was founded in 1998, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2000, and ultimately dismissed from bankruptcy in November 2006. In its early years, the company created Stan Lee branded super hero franchises for applications in all media including the standout series the 7th Portal. Its 165-man animation production studio was based in Los Angeles from 1998 to 2001. It won the 2000 Web Award for the best Entertainment Portal on the World Wide Web, but the company failed in the same year. Stan Lee himself cut ties with the company long before his death.
Robert E. Howard's legacy extended after his death in 1936. Howard's most famous character, Conan the Barbarian, has a pop-culture imprint that has been compared to such icons as Tarzan of the Apes, Count Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and James Bond. Howard's critical reputation suffered at first but over the decades works of Howard scholarship have been published. The first professionally published example of this was L. Sprague de Camp's Dark Valley Destiny (1983) which was followed by other works, including Don Herron's The Dark Barbarian (1984) and Mark Finn's Blood & Thunder (2006). Also in 2006, a charity, Robert E. Howard Foundation, was created to promote further scholarship.
L E Lundbergföretagen AB is an investment company controlled by the Swedish businessman Fredrik Lundberg and family.
Conan the Barbarian is a 2011 American sword and sorcery film based on the character of the same name created by Robert E. Howard. The film is a new interpretation of the Conan myth and is not related to the films featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger. It stars Jason Momoa in the title role, alongside Rachel Nichols, Rose McGowan, Stephen Lang, Ron Perlman, and Bob Sapp, with Marcus Nispel directing. Morgan Freeman narrates the film.
The works of Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) have been adapted into multiple media, the most famous being the Conan films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. In addition to the Conan films, other adaptations have included Kull the Conqueror (1997) and Solomon Kane (2009). In television, the anthology series Thriller (1961) led the adaptations with an episode based on the short story "Pigeons from Hell." The bulk of the adaptations have, however, been based on Conan with two animated and one live action series. Multiple audio dramas have been adapted, from professional audio books and plays to LibriVox recordings of works in the public domain. Computer games have focussed on Conan, beginning with Conan: Hall of Volta (1984) and continuing on to the MMO Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (2008). The first table-top roleplaying game based on Howard's works was TSR's "Conan Unchained!" (1984) for their game Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. The first comic book adaptation was in the Mexican Cuentos de abuelito - La reina de la Costa Negra #8 (1952). Howard-related comic books continued to be published to the present day. Howard is an ongoing inspiration for and influence on heavy metal music. Several bands have adapted Howard's works to tracks or entire albums. The British metal band Bal-Sagoth is named after Howard's story "The Gods of Bal-Sagoth."
Robert E. Howard's Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of is a sword and sorcery pen-and-paper role-playing game set in the world of Conan the Barbarian, the fictional Hyborian Age. Both the character and the setting were first imagined by author Robert E. Howard. Howard's original literary work has since spawned a vast franchise of novels, comic books, films, video games, board games, role-playing games, etc. Following this tradition, Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of is the third officially licensed Conan role-playing game. The two precedent games were Conan Role-Playing Game (1985–1988) and Conan: The Roleplaying Game (2004–2010), although there also had been supplements for independent generic systems, like GURPS Conan (1988–1989).
Raw Fury AB is a Swedish video game publisher, specialising in the publication of indie games, based in Stockholm. The company was founded in 2015 by Jonas Antonsson and Gordon Van Dyke.
Embracer Group AB is a Swedish video game and media holding company based in Karlstad. The company comprises 11 operative groups: Amplifier Game Invest, Asmodee, CDE Entertainment, Coffee Stain, Dark Horse Media, Deca Games, Easybrain, Freemode, Gearbox Entertainment, Plaion, and THQ Nordic.
Enad Global 7 AB is a Swedish video game holding company based in Stockholm. It was founded as Toadman Interactive in 2013 by Robin Flodin and Rasmus Davidsson as a work-for-hire consultancy studio. The company began fully developing games in 2017 and became a public company later that year. Starting in 2018, Toadman Interactive acquired other video game companies, including the developer Antimatter Games, marketing agency Petrol Advertising, and publisher Sold Out. In January 2020, Toadman Interactive reformed as Enad Global 7, organising Petrol Advertising, Sold Out, and the renamed Toadman Studios as its direct subsidiaries. Since then, Enad Global 7 has acquired Big Blue Bubble, Piranha Games, Daybreak Game Company, and Innova. In August 2021, the management was replaced with Daybreak Game Company's Ji Ham as acting chief executive officer (CEO) and Fredrik Rüdén as deputy CEO and chief financial officer, with Floding leaving the company and selling all shareholdings by May 2022. Innova was sold off in September 2022 due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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