Odyssey Entertainment Group Launches Original Content Division to Collaborate With Creators
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Odyssey Entertainment Group launched Odyssey Originals, a production division where partnered creators retain full IP ownership — a structure co-founder Nicole Kasper framed as extending the company's "people over profit" pillar into production.
- Co-founders Nicole Kasper and Paige Kosinski started Odyssey in 2021 as a management and brand partnership firm covering lifestyle, comedy, food, wellness, business, entertainment, fashion and home verticals before expanding into production.
- Odyssey Originals will operate alongside two existing production partners — comedy-focused King Jester and female-led SickBird Productions, which handles podcasts, documentaries and digital series.
- Odyssey and SickBird Productions previously co-produced the podcast "You Had 2 Be There," co-hosted by Odyssey-represented Nicole Story Dent alongside Kate Steinberg and Erin Miller, with SickBird CEO Jade Watson calling the expanded partnership a "creator-first" model.
- King Jester, led by Zack Slingsby and Brendan Nardozzi, has lined up comedian Courtney Michelle, Antonio Baldwin and Kristen Marie for its initial development slate as it builds out scripted comedy projects.
- Comedian Courtney Michelle said retaining 100% IP through Odyssey is "unheard of" — directly contrasting the company's pitch with standard production deals that typically assign underlying rights to the studio.
- King Jester's Slingsby framed the venture as a gap-filler, noting "great scripted comedy is difficult to find" despite a large pool of comedic talent, positioning the banner as a development pipeline for original shows and series.
Why it matters: Comedian Courtney Michelle's characterization of 100% IP retention as "unheard of" underscores how atypical Odyssey's structure is relative to standard production deals. For the comedians on King Jester's launch slate — Courtney Michelle, Antonio Baldwin and Kristen Marie — the model flips the usual arrangement in which studios own the rights to projects they help develop, potentially making Odyssey a test case for ownership-forward dealmaking in comedy.
Ask SkimNews
