 | |
| Private | |
| Industry | Publishing |
| Founded | 2003 |
| Founders | |
| Headquarters | , U.S. |
Key people | Shannon Gilligan (CEO) |
| Products | Choose Your Own Adventure |
| Website | cyoa.com |
Chooseco LLC is an American publishing company based in Waitsfield, Vermont. Founded in 2003 by author R. A. Montgomery and publisher Shannon Gilligan, the company primarily releases reissues of Montgomery's Choose Your Own Adventure series of gamebooks. [1] [2]
Montgomery had approached Bantam Books in the 1970s with his idea for "Choose Your Own Adventure" novels based upon a concept created by Edward Packard and originally published by Constance Cappel's and R. A. Montgomery's Vermont Crossroads Press as the "Adventures of You" series, starting with Packard's Sugarcane Island in 1976. The initial books were popular, and the series took off with additional authors, with publication between 1978 and 1998, with over two hundred fifty million books sold in thirty-eight languages. In 2003, Montgomery and his wife Shannon Gilligan opted to form Chooseco to republish some of the classic titles of the series, create new titles, and option the franchise for other media. [3]
In March 2007, Chooseco filed a lawsuit against car manufacturer DaimlerChrysler, claiming that the company's advertising campaign for their Jeep Patriot model, bearing the tagline "Choose Your Adventure", infringed on Chooseco's trademarks. [4] The suit was ultimately settled. [5]
Chooseco filed a similar trademark lawsuit in January 2019 against movie streaming platform Netflix following the release of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch , an interactive film produced and released by Netflix that uses the "choose your own adventure" phrase. [5] [6] The company has also sent cease and desist notices to developers of indie video games on the itch.io storefront for using the term "choose your own adventure" to describe their game. [7]
Netflix had responded to Chooseco's suit with a number of defenses, including the assertion that the use of the term was artistic expression protected by the First Amendment (see Rogers v. Grimaldi ), [8] and a request for Chooseco's trademark "Choose Your Own Adventure" to be cancelled on the basis that it had become genericised. [9] Netflix later conceded on the case and settled with Chooseco on undisclosed terms in November 2020. [10]
Netflix, Inc. is an American over-the-top content platform and production company headquartered in Los Gatos, California. Netflix was founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California. The company's primary business is a subscription-based streaming service offering online streaming from a library of films and television series, including those produced in-house. As of October 2020, Netflix had over 195 million paid subscriptions worldwide, including 73 million in the United States. It is available worldwide except in the following: mainland China, Syria, North Korea, and Crimea. It was reported in 2020 that Netflix's operating income is $1.2 billion. The company has offices in France, the United Kingdom, Brazil, the Netherlands, India, Japan, and South Korea. Netflix is a member of the Motion Picture Association (MPA), producing and distributing content from countries all over the globe.
Choose Your Own Adventure, or Secret Path Books is a series of children's gamebooks where each story is written from a second-person point of view, with the reader assuming the role of the protagonist and making choices that determine the main character's actions and the plot's outcome. The series was based upon a concept created by Edward Packard and originally published by Constance Cappel's and R. A. Montgomery's Vermont Crossroads Press as the "Adventures of You" series, starting with Packard's Sugarcane Island in 1976.
A gamebook is a work of printed fiction that allows the reader to participate in the story by making choices. The narrative branches along various paths, typically through the use of numbered paragraphs or pages. Each narrative typically does not follow paragraphs in a linear or ordered fashion. Gamebooks are sometimes called choose your own adventure books or CYOA after the influential Choose Your Own Adventure series originally published by US company Bantam Books. Gamebooks influenced hypertext fiction.
Shannon Gilligan is an author of interactive fiction and computer games.
Edward Packard is an American author, creator of the Choose Your Own Adventure book concept and author of more than 50 books in the series, as well as many other children’s books. He is also a lawyer, essayist, and poet. Born in Huntington, New York, he is a graduate of Princeton University and Columbia Law School.
Raymond Almiran Montgomery Jr. was an American author and key figure in the Choose Your Own Adventure interactive children's book series.
Multiple endings refer to a case in entertainment where the story could end in different ways.
Black Mirror is a British dystopian science fiction anthology television series created by Charlie Brooker. He and Annabel Jones are the programme's showrunners. It examines modern society, particularly with regard to the unanticipated consequences of new technologies. Episodes are standalone, usually set in an alternative present or the near future, often with a dark and satirical tone, although some are more experimental and lighter.
"Playtest" is the second episode in the third series of the British science fiction anthology television series Black Mirror. Written by showrunner Charlie Brooker and directed by Dan Trachtenberg, it premiered on Netflix on 21 October 2016, with the rest of series three.
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is an American supernatural horror television series developed by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa for Netflix, based on the Archie comic book series of the same name. The series is produced by Warner Bros. Television, in association with Berlanti Productions and Archie Comics. Aguirre-Sacasa and Greg Berlanti serve as executive producers, alongside Sarah Schechter, Jon Goldwater, and Lee Toland Krieger.
Asim Chaudhry is a British comedian and actor best known for playing Chabuddy G in the BBC mockumentary series People Just Do Nothing, which he co-created. For this role, he won a Royal Television Society Award and was nominated for two British Academy Television Awards. In 2015 and 2016, Chaudhry starred in the mockumentary Hoff the Record alongside David Hasselhoff. In 2018, Chaudhry appeared in series six of the panel show Taskmaster and starred in the television film Click & Collect alongside Stephen Merchant.
Sex Education is a British comedy-drama television series created by Laurie Nunn. Starring Asa Butterfield as an insecure teenager and Gillian Anderson as his mother, a sex therapist, the series premiered on 11 January 2019 on Netflix. Ncuti Gatwa, Emma Mackey, Connor Swindells, Aimee Lou Wood and Kedar Williams-Stirling co-star. It became a critical and commercial success for Netflix, with over 40 million viewers streaming the first series after its debut. The second series was released on 17 January 2020, and the show has been renewed for a third series.
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is a 2018 interactive film in the science fiction anthology series Black Mirror. It was written by series creator Charlie Brooker and directed by David Slade. The film premiered on Netflix on 28 December 2018, its release date only officially announced the day before. Netflix did not confirm the interactive nature of Bandersnatch until its release, though there was much media speculation.
El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie is a 2019 American neo-Western crime thriller film that serves as a sequel and epilogue to the television series Breaking Bad. The film continues the story of Jesse Pinkman, who partnered with former teacher Walter White throughout the series to become kingpins of an Albuquerque crystal meth empire, while the plot centers around the events that immediately follow Breaking Bad's finale. Series creator Vince Gilligan wrote, directed, and produced El Camino, while Aaron Paul reprised his role as Jesse Pinkman. Several actors involved in Breaking Bad also reprised their roles, including Jesse Plemons, Krysten Ritter, Charles Baker, Matt Jones, Robert Forster, Jonathan Banks, and Bryan Cranston. El Camino was also one of Forster's final film appearances, as he died on the day of its release.
David Packard Corenswet is an American actor. After graduating from the Juilliard School in 2016, he began guest starring in television series, including House of Cards in 2018. He then starred in the Netflix series The Politician (2019–present) and Hollywood (2020), both created by Ryan Murphy.
Incendiary Art is a collection of poems written by American poet, Patricia Smith. It was published on February 15, 2017, by TriQuarterly Books, an imprint of Northwestern University Press,. This collection was written as a response to the violent deaths of African American males and females in the United States, with a focus on the grief of the mothers who try to protect them, to no avail. Its title is a reference to the role of fire in African American lives, including the burning of Ku Klux Klan crosses and the burning spurred by riots in Black communities across America.
