Variety is reporting that the Gotham Group, an animation-focused management/production entity, has inked deals with Lionsgate and IDT Entertainment to produce 19 direct-to-DVD animated features over the next three years.  The deal should be a boon for the companies that the Gotham Group reps, since it is understood that the properties chosen for animation will come from Dark Horse Comics, Simon & Schuster's children's library and the William Steig and Maurice Sendak libraries, all of which are repped by the Gotham Group.

Gotham will produce 10 films with Lionsgate and nine with IDT and will put up an estimated $3 million for the production of each film.  Gotham's share of the production costs comes from the Korea-based Sovic Venture Capital.  Given the financing, it is easy to understand why production on the films will be done in Korea.

Under the terms of the deal Gotham gets the ability to greenlight projects, which should present some major opportunities for the company's clients such as Dark Horse.  Meanwhile Lionsgate and IDT get to experiment with very little risk and can take some chances while introducing new properties to the growing home video animation market. The success of Lionsgate's Marvel animated releases (see 'Ultimate Avengers on Toonami'), which spurred action on a similar deal for DC (see 'DC's Direct-to-Video Animation'), is undoubtedly the catalyst for this deal, although the direct-to-video market for animated movies has been growing steadily over the past decade years with plenty of successful releases including Barbie, G.I. Joe, and Bionicle cartoons, to say nothing of the immensely popular series of Disney direct-to-video animated sequels, which began over a dozen years ago with Return of Jafar (the sequel to Aladdin) and includes DTV blockbusters such as  The Little Mermaid II, The Lion King II, and Lady & the Tramp II.