Danny Simon
Danny Simon is a forty-plus-year licensing industry veteran with expertise in all phases of the merchandising and licensing process. Having built the licensing divisions for Lorimar Productions, 20th Century Fox, and Carolco Pictures, he opened his licensing agency in 1992 in Los Angeles, CA, called The Licensing Group, Ltd.
Danny has pioneered entertainment licensing, focusing on material geared to the teen+ market. Beginning with the television program DALLAS, he was among the first to license adult, prime-time television entertainment, and with DYNASTY, he was the first to apply branding techniques to television shows. He also developed successful licensing programs for M*A*S*H, Fall Guy, Alf, Rambo, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Mortal Kombat, Baywatch, U.S. Secret Service, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and David Hasselhoff.
He has also succeeded in film development. With MORTAL KOMBAT, he produced the first-ever film adaptation of a video game. He’s a partner in an entertainment development company that sold the rights to the MATT HELM book series to DreamWorks and Paramount, where it is currently in development as a motion picture.
For 18 years, Danny taught a continuing college-level entertainment licensing course at UCLA. He’s a founding member of LIMA and has been its president, a two-time member of its Board, and a member of LIMA’s Licensing Hall of Fame. With Greg Battersby, he developed and serves as Co-Dean of LIMA’s Certificate of Licensing Studies (‘CLS”) program.
Danny is also a regular lecturer on a variety of licensing topics around the world and serves as an international licensing consultant, providing consulting services to the Hong Kong Trade Development Council and other international groups.
He has qualified as an expert witness on licensing issues in over 25 litigations.
Over the years, Danny has written many articles on licensing for various industry publications. He regularly contributes to the Licensing Update book published annually by Wolters Kluwer and writes a monthly column on entertainment licensing for The Licensing Journal.