About the Company

Pop Sandbox is an award-winning multimedia production and publishing company with a central focus on original projects rooted in graphic novel and film. It is a boutique operation centered on innovative and meaningful storytelling across platforms, from initial concept through production to eventual publication/distribution. Pop Sandbox aims to bring together artists from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines into a creative environment that fosters innovation in both content and form.

Pop Sandbox's inaugural release was the ground-breaking 300-page journalistic comic book, KENK: A Graphic Portrait, which had its highly publicized Canadian premiere during Hot Docs and the Toronto Comic Arts Festival in May 2010.  It was the first graphic novel ever excerpted nationally by the Globe & Mail and the first graphic novel to be featured on the cover of Now Magazine, Canada's biggest weekly newspaper. KENK was recently named a Best Book of 2010 by Quill & Quire, Canada's top literary magazine, and was a special presentation at the International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam.  It is being released into the US and abroad in 2011, and is currently being developed as a fully animated film.

Pop Sandbox's second release is The Next Day, both a traditional print graphic novel and a robust interactive animated online documentary co-produced with the prestigious National Film Board of Canada (recipient of 70 Academy Award nominations).  They have two additional projects in full production and several projects in development.

About the Owner

Pop Sandbox is owned and operated by Alex Jansen.

Prior to launching Pop Sandbox, Jansen spent three and a half years managing home entertainment with Mongrel Media, Canada’s premiere independent and foreign film distribution company. There, Jansen oversaw marketing and production for more than 250 releases and built the operational system that continues to drive the division. Some of the releases he handled include The Corporation, Water, Manufactured Landscapes and The Festival Collection series for Blockbuster.

In addition to his extensive distribution background, Jansen was Co-Producer of the feature film Walk Backwards, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2001 and was distributed by ThinkFilm. Jansen is also Sole Founder and Chair of the Kingston Canadian Film Festival, the largest stand-alone showcase of feature films from across Canada, which recently celebrated its tenth anniversary.

Jansen studied Business – Marketing at Durham College and University Centre, where he received the Governor General’s Award for academics, followed by Film Studies at Queen’s University.