Two Ad Companies Are Said to Merge, Supplanting Industry Leader

Two of the largest advertising companies in the world, the Omnicom Group and the Publicis Groupe, are expected to announce their merger on Sunday, people with knowledge of the talks said, a move that would create a new industry leader positioned to better capture profits from digital media and emerging markets.

Maurice Levy, the president of Publicis.

John D. Wren, president and C.E.O. of the Omnicom Group.

The combination of Publicis, based in Paris, and Omnicom, based in New York, would supplant the advertising industry leader, WPP of London. While Omnicom is slightly bigger than Publicis, the deal is being billed as a merger of equals that would have a combined stock market value of more than $30 billion.

News on Friday of talks between the companies was a surprise to analysts and most of Madison Avenue, including some employees in each agency. On Saturday, Publicis announced it would hold a news briefing on Sunday about a “major corporate announcement.” An Omnicom spokeswoman did not return requests for comment. A Publicis spokeswoman declined to comment.

The marriage would bring under one roof separate networks of ad agencies â€" including BBDO, TBWA and DDB under Omnicom, and Leo Burnett and Saatchi & Saatchi under Publicis. Collectively, the conglomerates represent some of the world’s largest brands including AT&T, Visa and Pepsi at Omnicom and McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart at Publicis. How the agencies would handle potential conflicts is expected to be addressed by the companies on Sunday.

In an interview with The New York Times this month, Publicis’s longtime chief, Maurice Lévy, said he expected much of the growth in the advertising sector to come from emerging markets and mobile and digital advertising. Publicis has been making aggressive acquisitions in digital advertising including agencies like Rosetta and Razorfish.

“I think we are all talking a lot about what the future markets of mobile will be and how we will be able to get the revenue we are expecting from this market,” Mr. Lévy said, citing a $15 million investment in a mobile polling start-up that is focused on emerging markets like Africa. “It is a huge market with incredible possibility for the future. Everyone is fighting very hard and trying to find solutions to get these next billion consumers,” he said.

Omnicom, which analysts say has focused more on expanding its digital operations organically as opposed to through acquisitions, stands to benefit from the media buying power of the Starcom MediaVest Group, a division of Publicis that is one of the largest media agencies in the world. In April, Starcom signed a multiyear deal with Twitter to combine some of the resources that they both use for measuring and tracking data and advertising. That deal was estimated to be hundreds of millions of dollars.

Last year, revenue at Publicis increased nearly 14 percent to $8.8 billion, while revenue at Omnicom increased 2.5 percent to $14.2 billion.

The combined company could be jointly run by Mr. Lévy, who has been with Publicis since 1987, and John Wren, who has led Omnicom since 1997, according to the people with knowledge of the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deal was not completed. Mr. Lévy, 71, has been expected to name a successor since last year.

In a report on Saturday, Brian Wieser, a senior research analyst at Pivotal Research Group, said a merger would be “highly favorable for the entire advertising agency industry, and negative for media owners in most traditional media,” because it would weaken the negotiating power of companies in that sector.

Some analysts and industry players speculated whether the United States Justice Department would approve such a merger or whether the French government would bristle at a company that was not run by a French national.

But antitrust concerns could be eased if the new company positions itself less as a conglomerate of advertising agencies and more of a data company that would have to compete with businesses like I.B.M. and Facebook, Mr. Wieser wrote. He added that maintaining Mr. Lévy at the helm or ensuring that a board was dominated by French nationals might be enough to assuage the French government.

News of the talks was first reported by Bloomberg.

Sharing the Wealth as a Comic Book Goes to Hollywood

Sandy Huffaker for The New York Times

Ross Richie, Boom’s C.E.O., shook hands with a fan at Comic-Con in San Diego.

EIGHT years ago, when the founder and chief executive of Boom Studios offered to publish a comic book called “2 Guns” about two undercover drug agents, he frankly told its writer: “The paycheck isn’t borderline insulting; it is insulting.”

An edition of "2 Guns" which includes all five installments of the series.

But beyond the paltry pay, the C.E.O., Ross Richie, was able to offer the writer, Steven Grant, a deal that’s still not a given in the comics industry: a significant share in any movies, TV shows or video games that might emerge.

At the time, that possibility seemed slim. But this Friday, “2 Guns” will open as a live-action buddy film starring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg. Because of Boom’s “creator share” model, Mr. Grant got a cut of the money that Universal Pictures paid for the rights to the movie. (The deal was just shy of seven figures, Mr. Richie says.)

“Ultimately, it’s become the most successful thing I’ve ever done,” said Mr. Grant, an industry veteran. The first issue of a comic book sequel, “3 Guns,” hits shelves next month, and Universal has the option to turn it into a film, too.

When print books are made into movies, it’s common for the authors to benefit from the deal. But that hasn’t necessarily been the case with comic books. In the early days, creators sold their rights for a pittance, not dreaming that their characters would endure for years and migrate to television, film and all manner of merchandise. Or creators’ efforts have been considered “work for hire,” so the intellectual property has stayed with the publishers.

The giants of the comics industry, Marvel Entertainment and DC Entertainment, both run boutique publishing imprints that give creators more control of their intellectual property. But Marvel and DC are known mainly for “corporate comics” â€" series with top-tier characters like Spider-Man, Captain America, Batman and Superman. Those characters’ decades-long vitality has primarily benefited the publishers.

The comic book industry had $700 million to $730 million in sales of single issues and collected editions last year, but that sum is dwarfed by the billions that the superheroes can draw at the box office worldwide: “Marvel’s The Avengers,” “Iron Man 3” and “The Dark Knight Rises” are among the top 10 highest-grossing films of all time, at more than $1 billion each in ticket sales.

Marvel, owned by Disney, and DC, a unit of Time Warner, each command nearly 40 percent of the comic book market. Smaller publishers print superhero comics, too, but they know they must go beyond the traditional business model to compete with the behemoths.

At Image Comics, which has a market share of less than 7 percent, creators have full control of their characters. Image is where Robert Kirkman’s “Walking Dead,” about a world overrun by zombies, began its lurch toward a pop-culture phenomenon. “The Walking Dead” has achieved a rare alchemy: it is a popular comic book series, its collected editions are top sellers, it has inspired novels and games, and it has become a critically acclaimed TV series (on AMC).

Another small publisher, Dark Horse, prints creator-owned material and has licensing deals to produce comics featuring characters from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Star Wars.” Boom, with a market share of just 1.5 percent, also does licensing deals, including one for “Adventure Time,” based on a show on Time Warner’s Cartoon Network. But it uses its “creator share” model to attract writers like Mr. Grant.

MR. GRANT, 59, has written for many comic book companies, including Marvel, where he wrote issues of “The Punisher,” and a reverent 64-page “Life of Pope John Paul II” in 1982. He had the idea for “2 Guns” in the mid-1990s but could find no takers for his pitch; publishers were mainly interested in superhero comics. Nevertheless, he wrote the script for the comic book in 2001 and shared it over the years with friends, Mr. Richie included.

Mr. Richie remembered “2 Guns” in 2005, when he founded Boom and was looking for comics to publish. “You understand we’re a tiny little company, and we don’t have any resources,” he recalled saying to Mr. Grant, who was equally downbeat, responding, “O.K., it’s your funeral” when he accepted Boom’s offer to publish his comic.

Boom has had some success in attracting Hollywood to its properties. In 2006, after a bidding war, Universal bought “Tag,” about an ancient curse passed on by touch, and “Talent,” about a plane crash survivor who can channel the skills of the other passengers. But when “2 Guns” was released in 2007 as a five-issue comic series, illustrated by Mateus Santolouco, no one in Hollywood was interested. The next year, however, when Mr. Richie was on the verge of selling “2 Guns” to another studio, Universal snapped it up.

“We are always looking for great source material and especially something that could be developed to be a potential franchise,” Jeffrey Kirschenbaum, co-president of production for Universal Pictures, said in an e-mail. And the “2 Guns” plot, with its dual leads, he said, offered a good opportunity for two A-list actors to work together.

A version of this article appeared in print on July 28, 2013, on page BU5 of the New York edition with the headline: Sharing the Wealth as a Comic Book Goes Hollywood.

NBC Announces Mini-Series on Hillary Clinton

LOS ANGELES â€" Well in advance of the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Rodham Clinton is a big story.

NBC announced here on Saturday that it was preparing a four-hour mini-series based on the life of Mrs. Clinton and hoped to broadcast it before any possible formal declaration that she was running. That would avoid the possibility of other candidates demanding equal time, said Robert Greenblatt, NBC’s top entertainment executive.

Mr. Greenblatt said NBC bought the project even though it had no script yet, though the deal came with a star attached: Diane Lane, who was nominated for an Academy Award in 2003 for her leading role in the film “Unfaithful.” The Clinton project will be written and directed by Courtney Hunt, who was nominated for an Oscar for writing the film “Frozen River.”

NBC’s release described the project as a mini-series that would “recount Clinton’s life as a wife, politician and cabinet member from 1998 to present.” That would include her run for the presidential nomination in 2008.

The NBC release also said, “The script will begin with Clinton living in the White House as her husband is serving the second of his two terms as president. In the years following, she would eventually become a United States senator, run for president and, ultimately, serve the country as secretary of state.”

Mr. Greenblatt said the project would most likely include aspects that were both critical of Mrs. Clinton and supportive of her. He said he doubted Mrs. Clinton was aware of the project yet.

“We literally just closed the deal,” he said. But he said he did not expect her to comment on the project. “I don’t think she will endorse it,” he said.