30 original IP projects that all fold into one cohesive universe.

The intent is simple: share some cool, original projects with people that yearn for a new myth and new heroes to cheer on. That is the mission of Old Copperhorn Entertainment. But how did I procure over 30 different pieces of IP?

Well, I have released several projects going back as far as the 1990’s. Some had limited success as comic strips, comic books and webcomics. That’s a post for another day as I am currently writing under a pen name. These earlier projects were filed away as I created new ideas and turned them into treatments and scripts. Overall, I have been developing some of these projects off and on for over 30 years while some projects are only a few years old. It sounds crazy to have such old IP until you realize it took Tolkien decades to create Middle Earth before the public saw any of it. Even the best whiskey I have in my library is 24 years old. Coincidence? Nope. Sometimes things need to marinate a tad longer before awesomeness can be enjoyed to its fullest extent.

For the new Copperhorn studio, this time we are ALL. IN.

We are combining older IP mixed in with more recent IP that will spawn brand new stories to share. The end goal is to have these IP projects expand across film, TV, print media and additional adjacent segments. Copperhorn is neither a movie studio nor a comic book publisher– we are an original IP content provider that happens to release books, comics and so on. So with 30 projects where do you start? It took a lot of thought. Similar to that leap of faith when Walt Disney released Steamboat Willy or when Coppola put it all on the line for Apocalypse Now. This is that same kind of moment for me. Copperhorn Now!

The Foundation Batch

The initial approach to our scrappy little content factory is for us to hand-select the best streaming projects from Copperhorn’s growing vault of stories we call The Rackhouse. To me, these handpicked projects have high potential to interest both studios and fans alike (at least I hope they do!). Like a premium distillery, Copperhorn will be releasing our projects in batches. The first batch is called The Foundation Batch. After a committee of three (Me, myself & I) I was able to pick three distinct streaming projects for the Foundation. On the side, I recently recovered the data from an obliterated hard drive and BOOM! we now have a fourth IP to pull from the Copperhorn Rackhouse. So insanely cool.

Currently, we are cruising through some deep waters with our Foundation Batch projects. Let’s dive in headfirst and see what kind of trouble we have gotten into these past two weeks…

Nanoids Premium Comic Book No. 1

Artwork is continuing to pour in from the amazing Nanoids art team. The story is keeping pace with the pilot episode which is nice. The story unfolds with a nanotech experiment gone horribly wrong. The incident places a moratorium on any new nanotech uses for surgical procedures. The main plot then begins five years later in the fictional town of Ashewood, North Carolina- home to a massive research hub containing several biotech companies trying to get new nanobot tech in healthcare approved for humans. Enter Tranquility MicroScience and their hot shot researcher Dr. Katherine ‘Kat’ Aldonova. Her life is a white hot mess as her boss hates her, she is secretly dating one of Tranquility’s executives, her family is fractured and broken and now her hyper-advanced nanobots have been stolen. As the stolen nanotech makes its way from lab animals to wildlife, the horror thread heats up!

Copperhorn is targeting a Kickstart launch for Nanoids next month which is amazing. The planned comic book will be 64-pages of full-color horror adventure. A sample page is available for paid subscribers below the fold!

Iron Creek Novel

The next project that was exclusively announced to paid subscribers two weeks ago is a new western-horror novel coming from the Foundation Batch. Iron Creek is a new novel based on the Iron Creek TV pilot and short stories that I created a few years back. But I have expanded the myths surrounding Iron Creek so much with this novel that I will now have no choice but to go back and revise the TV pilot. A happy problem to have.

Iron Creek follows the citizens of a seemingly idyllic frontier town built upon land that has caused nothing but death and destruction for hundreds of years. Can the townsfolk band together to face the darkness or will their own greed and pettiness consume them? More details about Iron Creek in the weeks to come. Did I mention that Iron Creek taking place in the 1880’s connects into Nanoids taking place in the near future? Buckle up.

The 300-page novel is planned on being published in first quarter 2027. The official title of the book is Iron Creek or The Strange Case of M. Robichau. My first novel. We are in some uncharted waters here! There is a proposed Kickstarter that will kick off this exciting new series. In the meantime, a sample page from the first Iron Creek novel is below the fold!

Enjoy the bonus material below!

Smooth sailing my friends,

Burt McMurdle, Editor

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Ahoy! Welcome to the latest updates from Old Copperhorn Entertainment

Project Copperhorn

It has been a busy summer for our scrappy little franchise studio.

Two projects are going on simultaneously at light speed. If the stars align correctly, Copperhorn should have our first Kickstarter campaign, first live event, first published premium comic book and first published quality paperback novel completed within the first year of our existence. Pretty cool right?

To accomplish this feat, Copperhorn has an incredibly talented art team fully booked up; we are also in the final stages of getting a much-needed freelance editor; and recently we brought on Modern Fanatic as our new marketing agency. All flags are flying so let’s hoist the mainsail!

What does all this mean for the mildly curious follower of Project Copperhorn? As I have alluded to before, Old Copperhorn is similar in operation to a whiskey distillery. Like a fine bourbon, our IP takes time to be refined and transformed into something beyond a script or idea. It won’t happen overnight but the journey, as they say, is half the adventure. That is why Project Copperhorn launched on Substack. This is for you, my friends, whatever you want to get out of it!

I mentioned in our last newsletter that when our finished assets (ex. Premium comic books, novels) are ready to be published, Copperhorn wants you to be the first to know! So there will be opportunities for advanced copies for interested reviewers as well as exclusive early sales windows, freebies and invites for paid subscribers.

Early Adopters of Old Copperhorn

Just a recap as we head closer to the first projects from our rackhouse heading to market- free subscribers to Project Copperhorn will continue to see regular posts here and receive the Shallow Depths newsletter. For paid subscribers, you will receive exclusive content including more unlocked info below the fold in the Shallow Depths issues like this one.

Exclusive content will feature even more inside scoops and exclusive first looks on what Old Copperhorn is working on. There is also an offer to get onboard as a Foundation Member for access to Copperhorn live events and sweet discounts at the Copperhorn Store. More details to follow.

So let’s keep cruising. As always, welcome aboard and enjoy the ride! Here are our latest project updates:

Social Media Channels Launched

To expand our Copperhorn brand and our growing list of IP brands, Copperhorn is now posting on Facebook, Instagram and BlueSky. Please follow us on your preferred channels and bring along your friends that love comics, streaming and film!

Nanoids Update

This is our Iron Man project that is launching the entire Shallowverse. You can follow along on the social media channels listed above as the Nanoids comic book gets closer to launch day on Kickstarter. Our amazing production team is in the middle of completing nearly 15 pages of Book One. Our studio is still expecting to have the comic book published in the next six months. Stay tuned for our Fall 2026 crowdfunding campaign supporting Nanoids Book One.

Western-Horror Reveal

The next project inside the Shallowverse is a new western-horror series. I am very excited about this project as I have been building up the research, characters and settings for this series for many years. I wanted this series to have an authentic western feel so it took many years to capture the right tone. In the past two decades, I have teased out short-stories, comic book minis and pilot scripts for this series. It was all training to get to this moment where a novelization is nearly complete. I am now retrofitting this series to make it central to the Shallowverse mythology. Ready to learn more about the new series before everyone else?

Exclusive announcements are below the fold for paid subscribers. I hope you will considering unlocking this next level of Old Copperhorn!

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The Copperhorn Rackhouse boasts over 30 original projects in various phases of development. All are intended for movie and film. The source material for these projects come from a variety of places. Some of the material is new, like Nanoids, while others are decades-old assets ready to be revived and rebooted. While the majority of our files are digitized and out there on ‘The Cloud’, a few outliers unfortunately never got uploaded.

If you’re an old fossil like myself, you may recall the years of physical media storage used for any large files that could not fit on your desktop computer. Being a Mac guy engaged in graphic design, the computer’s hard drive would fill up fast. My first storage option was sadly floppy disks. Had piles of them. Then came along a cassette-looking thing called a SyQuest drive which helped. The downside is that the removable SyQuest media was expensive.

You see, back in my day, not only did I have to walk uphill in the snow both ways to get to school, but we also had to FedEx our graphic files to the printer or publisher. No shared servers available for uploading back then. But the damn SyQuest cassette was just expensive enough that you needed the media returned to you when the project was over. What a pain to track and share!

Then came something smaller and a little cheaper called Zip drives. I liked the Zip drive era. The removable media looked like a thick floppy disk, was fast to load, took up less space on the shelf and it wasn’t the end of the world if you never got your Zip disk returned to you from the vendor. Then the recordable CD drives became cheap enough to add to your desktop unit and this really advanced the ability to store and ship physical media at scale. Plus it enabled epic ‘mix tapes’ for long road trips. The final phase I experienced in physical media is still kicking around today…external hard drives that rival the storage capacity of your laptop.

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At some point I am assuming you are like me and you ditched the external media drives and started backing everything up into The Cloud - that mysterious and invisible space where all human existence is copied and stored. But during the crossover from analog to cloud, my WD back-up hard drive unit (which was a back up to an even older external WD hard drive unit) stopped working on my MacBook. It also didn’t work on my next MacBook. So over the last 15 years, I have lost a treasure trove of assets that are stuck in two antiquated and broken hard drives. Sad.

Inside those dead units are superheroes, aliens and monsters spread across scripts, comic books and comic strips. All are in limbo but have made the list for a future Copperhorn launch and will be incorporated into the Shallowverse- the cinematic universe from Old Copperhorn. But instead of starting from scratch, the original source material on those drives would help tremendously (and some can even be reprinted in their original glory under the Copperhorn imprint). Thankfully there are cottage industries that exist for taking our analog lives and making them digital. Just like digitizing old photographs and videotapes, there are services that can conduct an autopsy on your dead media units and attempt to retrieve the files long thought deceased.

So while my long dead media units are being examined in some Ohio clean room, I hope the retrieval team can resurrect the critical files I so desperately seek. Should the retrieval prove successful, I will be opening up a good bottle of bourbon very soon. We will also be able to squeeze in another Copperhorn publication for later this year. Exciting times as little Old Copperhorn continues to get our sea legs during this fantastic voyage that is years in the making.

Smooth sailing my friends,

Burt McMurdle, Editor

www.oldcopperhorn.com

Almost 50 years later and “Star Wars” means way, way more than a single film or the original trilogy. It’s a robust Star Wars cinematic universe that is still unfolding today. But the original Star Wars motion picture is still a textbook case study in filmmaking and world-building for aspiring content providers like myself.

Visualize Your World

Copperhorn has amassed a lot of great treatments over the past decade for original movie and TV concepts that all now fold into one cohesive cinematic universe. To bring this vision to life, I look to film pioneers like Lucas for inspiration. Hard to believe but Star Wars was created out of George’s brilliant mind. Not from a comic book series or some fantasy novels but from his brain. To get his dream distilled and finally pushed through at 20th Century Fox, George hired illustrators to visualize what was floating around in his head.

Exactly! I think this critical step gets overlooked when you’re trying to build a new world. Like Lucasfilm back when George was pitching Star Wars, Copperhorn does not have the ability to complete a media project on our own. So I am grateful that I have a team of artistic allies on board that are creating the beginnings of the Shallowverse and our Nanoids storyboards. This horror series now has an illustrated pitch book, a registered pilot episode and soon a comic book adaptation. We believe that it is worth the extra time and investment to visualize our pitches and build out a character and setting catalog. Copperhorn has to stand out among the crowd. There is a lot of sameness out there. Copperhorn intends to play it differently. We’re switching to manual.

So May the 4th and May the 25th be with you; I hope you celebrate in your own way. Enjoy that favorite Star Wars show or film (the fam has selected Rogue One for this year’s viewing) or perhaps reorganize that bookshelf displaying your pristine Star Wars figures (making laser gun SFX while getting your Star Wars stash organized is perfectly acceptable regardless of age).

This day has me reflecting back to those childhood memories when my eyes were as big as pancakes upon seeing Star Wars for the first time (and Raiders of the Lost Ark and Empire Strikes Back). That shear joy of cinematic adventure, the investment in characters that resonate, the ups and downs of the hero’s journey, the music and the amazing visionary canvas that the films were created upon. My thought between movies - Are these types of films going to come out like this every summer? I would say in the nearly 50 years since the original Star Wars film, it has been a rarity. But I want more of it and I am tired of waiting so Copperhorn is just going to offer up new concepts to whomever wants to take a chance on us.

If you feel we could use some more Star Wars and Indiana Jones moments, those new original, fun adventures in cinema and streaming, then follow us as we get this ship launched with all sails unfurled. Thank you George for your continued inspiration!

Smooth sailing my friends,

Burt McMurdle, Editor

The Pitch Book - Nanoids

Our pitch deck for our new horror drama series, Nanoids, is now complete. This is our Iron Man moment. Our invested dollars converted into a concept for a new streaming franchise. Oh that took way longer than I expected. But at least I learned a lot along the way and I am wiser for the experience. Our next project is a pretty cool sci-fi series concept with my desire and intent of crafting a pitch book in half the time. Did I mention the sci-fi series will tie into Nanoids? Very cool.

The Comic Book - Nanoids

Meanwhile, onward to the Nanoids comic book! The principal artwork for the Nanoids comic book is starting to trickle out and it is a sight to behold. It has been a very long time since I worked on a comic book. At this stage, I am very happy with the early pages. Here is a teaser:

When the artwork is more finished, I will post more sneak previews for paid subscribers. Also note that paid subscribers will get a digital copy of the Nanoids comic book when it is released. So where will it also be released to the masses?

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The Funding - Nanoids

In the modern era, there is no better way to get an untested comic book off the ground than through crowdfunding. At least that is the assumption from an old war horse who was last self-published 15 years ago. But alas, crowdfunding sites are a lot like public parks, all are welcome. You must give it your best to rise above the Dothrakian hordes jamming for space. Only the strong survive.

So with our canons loaded and decks cleared, Old Copperhorn will be unloading our preview campaign next week on the Kickstarter crowdfunding site. I hope the three people reading this (hi mom) will follow us on Kickstarter in the weeks to come as we get Nanoids into the hands of comic book fans worldwide. I welcome any feedback about crowdfunding, pitch books, comic books or guacamole recipes.

Smooth sailing my friends,

Burt McMurdle, Editor

www.oldcopperhorn.com

I am a writer, an artist, an editor and a hopeless romantic. Not all these attributes are created equally. So when it came time to help birth a new original content studio, I needed to bring forth whatever A game skills I could implement across multiple studio functions.

Writer

Putting pen to paper is not something that takes a lot of skill. We can all write a story. But is the yarn you are spinning intended for your eyes only or do you wish to write something that other people may enjoy reading? That’s where the rubber meets the road. When I write stories, I write what I would want to read and the general population as a whole would enjoy. Sure, if you don’t like horror, comedy or sci-fi that is no worries. But there are horror, comedy and sci-fi films and streaming that have broken through to very large audiences. That’s the rarefied air I am flying toward when I write regardless of genre.

I have only written two screenplays but like most writers, I get better with age. I have also written a few short stories, blogs, magazine articles, grad school research papers and a half-finished non-fiction book. I like writing but it takes a long time. Not just the writing part but the walking away and let it fester part. That can take as short as a few days to as long as a few years. Fascinating that today I read about authors using AI to crank out novels at warp speed. I am the exact opposite of that! But I am grateful I can type without looking at my keyboard. Except for the semicolon button; that is a tough one to find.

Artist

Drawing comes naturally for me. My skillset sits more on the cartoon side of the art spectrum after years and years of publishing comic strips in newspapers and then online. Yes, there was a time when my comic strips were read in newspapers by over 300,000 people per day and then online with over 40,000 impressions per month. I think the glory days of daily comic strips are behind us unfortunately. I miss Peanuts, Family Circus (Bil Keane era), Calvin & Hobbes, Far Side and so many other newspaper classics. Webcomics really don’t provide an enjoyable replacement for me. However, I think the IP assets I created back in my comic strip days have a place inside our expanding Shallowverse catalog of characters. Stay tuned.

I always wanted to be a comic book artist but could never make it over the hump. I bought all the books, took classes and even as a young punk I met the legendary Marvel Comics team during a private visit at their studio in the glory days of the mid-80’s. I have a lot of cool original artwork from that epic visit that I still cherish to this day. Best souvenirs ever.

The two principle mediums that Copperhorn resides in currently is storyboards and comic books. These formats are way more accessible at this early stage of our business than trying to produce our own streaming and film projects. There is a stark difference between comic strip cartoon-style art and the more realism displayed in mainstream comics and storyboards. But at least I can add my cartoon sketches to my script notes!

Editor

Yes, for now I remain the in-house editor but the projects are going to get too big down the road and I will need to step aside. Until then, I have to use my journalism degree and pretend I did not write a script or storyboard as I do rounds of edits. Not easy but it helps if you are slightly crazy like myself.

Editors are monumentally important for not just books and periodicals but even something as simple as a crowdfunded comic book or a pitch book. Plenty of eyes look at our final drafts but the final editorial decisions are currently going through me. So fingers crossed everything still makes sense before we go to press.

Hopeless Romantic

When it comes to my love of TV and film…guilty as charged. This hopeless romantic can’t help himself but to try and make a healthy contribution to the wonderful world of what we use to call Hollywood. Like many aspiring writers and dreamers, I built my career in cubicle land since I never intended to be a starving artist living in mom’s basement. I did manage to get my first pitch book completed 20 years ago. My first script 15 years ago. But you have heard it all before- family and career take priority so not much came from my earlier efforts. But, in my endless pursuit of tilting at windmills, the timing is perfect to give it one more shot. This time a little more wiser, more humble and with a heck of a lot more original concepts. I just love escapist film and TV. Can’t help it. What Hollywood moments stir your heart with joy and amazement?

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Off the top of my head:

Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon coming in at the 11th hour with the sun at its back to help Luke blow up the Death Star. John McClane laughing with his hands up while a pistol is gift wrapped to his back. The moment Keyser Söze is revealed. Elliot seeing E.T. glowing again. Bishop coming back for Ripley. Indiana winking at Short Round after the spell is broken. Superman asking General Zod to step outside. I literally have goosebumps while I am typing this.

I want more of that and I am working hard to bring my A game so I can help make it happen.

Smooth sailing my friends,

Burt McMurdle, Editor

www.oldcopperhorn.com

The many projects that will come out of Old Copperhorn’s vaults are actually based on concepts I created over the last few decades. Some very cool ideas were developed into comic book adventures from back in my younger days. A few were even published many moons ago. Other concepts were developed into scripts and treatments as recently as last year. Most of these projects will connect into a cohesive cinematic universe intended for streaming or film.

The Foundation Batch

The initial approach to our scrappy little content factory is for us to hand-select the best streaming projects from Copperhorn’s growing storehouse. These handpicked projects have high potential to interest both studios and fans alike (at least I hope they do!). After a few years of grappling with what project would receive the initial spotlight, I narrowed it down to three distinct streaming projects. The intent is simple: share three cool, original projects with the world via an eventual streaming series while adapting these series into comic books. I’m neither a movie studio nor a comic book publisher; I am an original content provider.

Copperhorn will be releasing our first three projects as part of The Foundation Batch. This batch will help Copperhorn to establish a beachhead that will open up a path for future batch releases. I have hiding amongst the racks original treatments for space thrillers, slasher films, rom coms, cop dramas, detective whodunits, teen comedies, superheroes and more.

The first wave, The Foundation Batch, will feature a horror series, a western series and a cop series. Yes, all of these projects are part of the Shallowverse canon. First up is our horror series. It is time to introduce you to Old Copperhorn Entertainment’s first scripted project.

COMPLETED: Nanoids Season 1, Episode 1 (Pilot)

I am very excited about this first project. This is our Steamboat Willy. Our Iron Man. Our Artemis II. Welcome to Nanoids.

The logline: After advanced nanotech for surgical procedures is stolen, an ambitious researcher balancing her love life, career and family must gather a team together to stop AI-powered microbots from unleashing hell all over town.

Here is an early sneak peek of Nanoids from our recently-completed storyboards:

I hope I piqued your interest as we get set to embark on new adventures with all hands on deck and canons fully loaded. I am very happy with the art team that worked on the foundational resources for Nanoids including artist Douglas Mora on the storyboard shots above.

A registered pilot script, character designs, pitchbook and principle storyboards are all now completed as of today (grab the champagne). As we begin to pitch the new series, I am also moving forward on a comic book adaptation of the Nanoids pilot episode. This Wednesday at 5:00pm EST is our grand opening when we officially christen the good ship Copperhorn by going live with an expanded version of our Old Copperhorn website. On the full website, you can track where we are with the episodic scripts on all our Foundation Batch projects including Nanoids.

Smooth sailing my friends,

Burt McMurdle, Editor

When crafting a verse for a poem or song, it is important to bring forth words, imagery and tone that resonates. The words help bring meaning, the imagery paints the picture, and the tone brings out the feeling you are hoping to achieve. Done right, the verse makes the poem or song enjoyable and memorable for the reader or listener.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

There once was a note,

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Pure and easy

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Playin’ so free

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Like a breath rippling by

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

-Pete Townshend

The same can be said for the wonderful world of film, streaming and comics. But I’m referring to a different kind of verse…a cinematic universe.

What Marvel Studio’s MCU did for superhero movies is what Apple’s iPhone did for society – it changed everything. Finally (finally!) it seems Hollywood gave itself permission to crossover films and build franchises beyond the linear prequel-sequel-reboot. Now characters are crossing over well-established franchises even beyond superheroes. But does it have to be confined to only a handful of properties? Nope.

At Old Copperhorn, we are setting a resonating tone by distilling a new cinematic universe of our own. Currently over 30 unique projects are in various forms of development. Overkill? That is correct since we are slightly crazy. Some pitches are self-contained limited series, one-shot films, or a streaming series conceptualized across several seasons. Most of our pitches have the potential to spawn sequels, prequels, offshoots and so on. Many of the projects also have a common trait: they all reside in the same cinematic universe. This may not seem too original until you consider that our projects include comedies, horror, sci-fi, westerns, superheroes, drama and animation. Enter the Shallowverse.

In The Shallowverse

To tie it all together, about 90% of our current projects connect into a MacGuffin that we call the Shallow Nupe. The Nupe is a mysterious asteroid cluster that appears in the night sky every 17 years. This space oddity contains piles of floating rubble that astronomers believe are leftovers from a distant galaxy that mysteriously ended over 8 billion years ago.

The Nupe spends a few days near Earth’s orbit, and its presence has confounded star gazers for centuries. But over the last 30 years, astronomers have begun to slowly connect a variety of unexplained anomalies on Earth back to the asteroid appearances.

The Shallow Nupe, with all its white-hot messiness, intertwines its way throughout the Copperhorn projects. Like Maximus said, “What we do in life echoes in eternity.” The quote aptly describes the chaos the Nupe leaves behind on its flybys of our planet.

If a series or film is in the same world with the Shallow Nupe, we label the project as being “in the Shallowverse”. Some stories are even set in a ‘Nupe Year’ when the asteroids are visible in the sky. But for the most part, the existence of the Nupe is off in the background of our stories.

It’s a lot to take in I know. But it sounds like fun so we’re doing it.

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For as long as possible, I am going full Kevin Feige on keeping track of the Shallowverse and all its effects on our characters and story arcs. The tracking is sustainable for the moment as we are only concentrating on three projects that comprise our first phase or batch of stories. But ask me again when we get to Batch Three or Batch Four and I will probably need to be rescued to avoid sinking in an ocean of plot contradictions. More on our upcoming batches in another post.

Smooth sailing my friends,

Burt McMurdle, Editor

www.oldcopperhorn.com

Photo credits: Dreams time stock sample; Keynote filters

In the modern era, the source of new IP for big film or streaming franchises is typically through established properties like comic books (ex. Marvel, DC), novels (ex. Game of Thrones, Harry Potter) or even toys & games (ex. Lego, Minecraft). There is that occasional totally raw script with no prior fan base that gets lit at studio level (ex. Stranger Things was pitched 13 times!). When measuring risk and the cost of production, these days the big studios are safely residing in reboots, prequels and sequels.

As a result, the main reason people go to the theater these days is for big tentpole films like Avengers or occasional book adaptations with big star appeal like Project Hail Mary. For streaming services, studios are rebooting or expanding franchises as much as possible since the studios have sandboxed their properties inside their own streaming services. With not enough new content, we are experiencing, as subscribers, more streaming offers going into sports and unscripted reality shows. This signals to me that Hollywood could use new fictional content to help expand the theater experience and the value of a streaming subscription for years to come.

Why Copperhorn is Unique

This is where a company like Old Copperhorn can contribute. At Old Copperhorn, our concept is rather simple yet slightly different than your typical media start-up. We love comic books, film and TV but the order in which we develop our original concepts is on a unique path. Since TV and film is our end goal, we like to begin with the end in mind. The treatments, screenplays, storyboards and pitch books are created first. Once completed, the concept now has enough source material to then get handed over to a team that can adapt the concept into a comic book or graphic novel.

Built Like a Distillery

It’s a lot like making bourbon. You have a mash bill of grains that get fermented and then piped through the still to get to your white dog or moonshine. This moonshine is un-aged grain alcohol that then gets stored in a barrel for a specific period of years in a rackhouse. This unaged white dog has all the ingredients inside to become a Pappy Van Winkle but the juice hasn’t matured in the barrel yet. During this time, thanks to temperature, humidity and chemical reactions, that barrel is then bottled into fine bourbon whiskey to sip and enjoy.

At Copperhorn, we are like a small batch distillery for original scripted projects. We take a new mash bill of a story, pump it through a few rounds of screenplay rewrites and then distill the script into a cohesive pitch book with character designs and illustrated storyboards. This is our moonshine. We look to the production studios to tap our concepts that can then be bottled and packaged into the next hit streaming series or blockbuster motion picture.

It’s a stretch but a pretty close comparison and since I like bourbon, I’m sticking with the analogy. Our studio has over 30 stories that are in early development bound for the Copperhorn Rackhouse and onward from there (fingers crossed) to TV or film. Since a greenlit project could be years away, Copperhorn intends to periodically release adaptations of our pitches into comic books (based on streaming episodes) and graphic novels (based on films). This is one of the many methods Copperhorn is adopting that makes us unique to the typical screenplays being created today.

What’s Next

I’ll continue to expand on our innovative business model in additional posts. Next week, in addition to our full website launch, this Substack will start diving into our first streaming series concept. I call it the ‘Iron Man’ of the Rackhouse since this is our first shot across the bow. It’s probably more like Pandora’s Box with the havoc the storyline will cause. Stay tuned!

Smooth sailing my friends,

Burt McMurdle, Editor

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About Project Copperhorn

Welcome aboard! Project Copperhorn is the public outreach arm of Old Copperhorn Entertainment. Old Copperhorn is a brand new, tiny media start-up with big ambitions to bring new projects to streaming, film and comic books. We literally just started in December of 2025 but don’t let the shiny new kid glow fool you. Over the years, Old Copperhorn has quietly amassed dozens of original IP, books and characters and now we are gearing up to launch.

You can pick your poison as Old Copperhorn projects cut across a slew of genres including horror, drama, sci-fi, westerns, action, adventure, rom-coms and animation. Our hopes are high and we invite you to join us in our new adventures.

Who will write the next great myth?

Where is that new story? That new great myth that brings a new longing in your heart to cheer on new characters? I felt it as a child seeing Luke Skywalker for the first time and my children experience it today in Stranger Things. But Skywalker made his debut 50 years ago and Stranger Things’ successful run has recently ended for now.

Meanwhile, there is just so many times you can keep redoing streaming and film from the 80’s and 90’s or keep rebooting Marvel, DC and even Star Wars. Simply stated, we need new creators and new adventures.

The time is now to bring forth fresh, new, original content intended for pure enjoyment. Project Copperhorn on Substack is here to bring you updates on a new world of adventure being built in real time. The Old Copperhorn model is different than a typical publisher or media company and will be explained in a future post.

Great hail! we cry to the comers

From the dazzling unknown shore;

Bring us hither your sun and your summers;

And renew our world as of yore;

You shall teach us your song’s new numbers,

And things that we dreamed not before:

Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,

And a singer who sings no more.

- Arthur O’Shaughnessy

All Hands on Deck

Here on Substack I will post updates on Old Copperhorn throughout the week and your feedback is welcome! In the meantime, you can check out the official Old Copperhorn website here.

The website is currently in stealth mode but we will be hoisting the sails on the full site on April 15th in conjunction with our Grand Opening. So we can finally say that Tax Day in the US is not so bad of a day after all!

Subscribe!

Free subscribers will see regular posts here so be sure to click the button. For paid subscribers, you will receive exclusive content and posts featuring more inside scoops on what Old Copperhorn is working on. There is also an offer to get onboard as a Foundation Member for access to Copperhorn live events and discounts at the Copperhorn Store. More details to follow.

Next Steps

That’s a lot to cover in one post. I’ll drop some more posts to bring you up to speed. We’re having a lot of fun over here and I invite you to follow us on Substack as we get this ship launched.

Smooth sailing my friends,

Burt McMurdle, Editor