Top Gun: Maverick director, Reggie Hudlin, and JMS highlight AWA Studios' new Creative Council

AWA Studios' Creative Council (Image credit: AWA Studios)

Indy publisher AWA Studios has announced the formation of a new "Creative Council" featuring what it calls a "roster of renowned storytelling innovators“ whose members will shape the "overall evolution of AWA's creator-driven mission and continually redefine the cutting edge of storytelling."

The roster includes director, producer, and screenwriter Reginald Hudlin, author and screenwriter Gregg Hurwitz, producer and screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis, Top Gun Maverick (2022's global box office champ) director Joseph Kosinski, comedian, writer, actor, podcaster, and producer Al Madrigal, and TV creator and comic book brand name writer J. Michael Straczynski.

According to the publisher, the new council is a "highly-differentiating component of the AWA business model" and its guidance will benefit AWA's roster of writers and artists by helping "unleash the full potential of their characters and stories, providing a diversity of contemporary storytelling perspectives and putting projects in the best position to be scaled across the entertainment ecosystem."

"At AWA, we are focused on building a next generation entertainment company that is laser focused on supporting creators by helping ground-breaking story ideas grow and scale to their fullest potential. Our Council members have exceptional achievements in Hollywood and share a powerful and personal connection to graphic fiction,” says Matthew Anderson, co-chairman and president of AWA Studios.

"We're honored to collaborate with and share in the Council's collective wisdom and experience which will help AWA consistently develop powerful original packages along with our TV, film, and Web3 partners."

Part of Straczynski's work for the council will be to allow interested creators to integrate their original characters in the Resistance Universe, a new comic book shared universe of JMS's creation.

Kosinski, who created the unpublished original graphic faction story Oblivion and then co-produced and directed the 2013 feature film adaptation starring Tom Cruise, is set to direct Chariot for Warner Bros., based on the AWA graphic novel by writer Bryan Edward Hill about a petty criminal looking to reform his life who stumbles upon the Chariot, a Cold War-era secret government super-charged muscle car.

"In only a few years, AWA has established itself as one of the hottest emerging players in the graphic fiction landscape," says ASA chief creative officer and former Marvel editor-in-chief Alex Alonso. "The reason for this is our ability to find and nurture creative talent and create an opportunity for them to develop their original ideas. This Creative Council provides our creators with another true-changing opportunity to work with a company that has unique insights in both the comic industry and who have generated tremendous success in Hollywood as well."

I'm not just the Newsarama founder and editor-in-chief, I'm also a reader. And that reference is just a little bit older than the beginning of my Newsarama journey. I founded what would become the comic book news site in 1996, and except for a brief sojourn at Marvel Comics as its marketing and communications manager in 2003, I've been writing about new comic book titles, creative changes, and occasionally offering my perspective on important industry events and developments for the 25 years since. Despite many changes to Newsarama, my passion for the medium of comic books and the characters makes the last quarter-century (it's crazy to see that in writing) time spent doing what I love most.