Stepping into the ‘Archieverse’

When an announcement was made last year that Universal Studios was making a movie about Archie Andrews produced by Hollywood heavyweights, it should have been a victory for one of comics’ most enduring franchises. Instead, it triggered a legal war which ties up a Beverly Hills mansion, accusations of threats fit for an “organized crime figure” and a much-awaited movie on the line.

With a UCC foreclosure auction set for June 15, the fate of Archie Andrews — and the Archie Comics empire — hangs in the balance.

In this episode, 9fin’s global head of distressed and LevFin, Max Frumes, sat down with distressed debt reporter Maria Heeter and LME legal analyst Laurie Tomassian, co-authors of a recent investigation into the dispute between lender Raven Capital and Archie Comics co-CEO Jonathan Goldwater to break down how it all unraveled.

As a quick shoutout, the episode references and includes short audio clips from the 1969 hit 'Sugar, Sugar' by the fictional bubblegum-pop group, The Archies. The song held the #1 spot on the Billboard Top 100 for eight weeks between October and December 1969. The episode theme song is a tongue-in-cheek homage to The Archies’ second studio album, Everything’s Archie, created bespoke for this episode by our producer Chase Collum.

Clarifications: There's actually no show called “Desperate Mormon Housewives. Instead the popular reality television series was called "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives". Also, while Archie Comics did once don the wrappers of Topps bubble gum, that was in the 1950s, and the host was almost certainly referring to Bazooka Joe.

Have any feedback on this episode? Send us a note at [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!

Creators and Guests

Producer

Chase Collum

Head of Podcasts for 9fin Limited

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Archie Andrews
Okay, everybody. Here we go with our new hit record: Sugar, sugar!

Max Frumes
Hello. Welcome to Cloud 9fin. My name is Max Frumes. I'm the Global Editor of Distressed Debt and Leveraged Finance. And I'm joined today by Maria Heeter, Distressed Debt Reporter with 9fin, and Lori Tomassian, LME Legal Analyst. And these two are the co-authors of a recent story published on 9fin about a very interesting private credit facility gone south. And the story was entitled A Hollywood Movie, A Beverly Hills Mansion, and a Lender Lawsuit: Inside the Debt-Fueled War for Archie Comics. So Maria why don't you set the scene here about what this story was about and then get into why Archie, and why now.

Maria Heeter
Yes thank you for having us so just to provide a high level overview last summer Universal, which is one of the most powerful largest movie studios, was reported by Hollywood outlets to be working on a movie about Archie Andrews, the main character of Archie Comics. Lord and Miller, the producer pair behind the very famous Into the Spider-Verse, a former Fox film executive and a very well-known comic book artist and author, Tom King, were said to be penning the script and getting the production ready.

But behind the scenes, and this is where we come in, a loan between Raven Capital, which is a New York firm focused on asset-based lending and the co-chief executive of Archie Comics, Jonathan Goldwater, went bad. Now, the future of the Archie empire is up for grabs. Raven is fighting to foreclose it. And Jonathan Goldwater, Archie's co-CEO, is saying that they have no right to it.
Max Frumes
So, you know, like, I guess, have you had thoughts on the, you know, the popularity, the enduring popularity of Archie, why there was a movie to be made and why there's a fight over the IP?

Maria Heeter
Sure. So I'll take a step back and just explain for those of us who did not grow up reading Archie like I did, who Archie is. So first, what is Archie Comics? It is one of the longest running comic books in history. It has sold more than 2 billion copies since its founding more than 85 years ago. And unlike its superhero comic book competitors, it did so by featuring a group of regular high school kids.

There's the main character, Archie Andrews, who is a redheaded, good-natured protagonist, a sort of classic boy next door. And he has two love interests. There is Betty, who's a blonde, all-American, good-natured type. And there's also Veronica, a stereotypical rich brunette her counterpart calls Archie ‘Archiekins’ and has a very wealthy father.

So for all these reasons and more Archie has had a lasting global appeal it's originated in the 40s and has continuously published over eight decades there have been various animated series spinoffs through the 60s and the 70s and it most recently inspired the 2023 Indian Hindi language teen musical The Archies and its success is notable because Archie was actually primarily sold in grocery stores.

That's unlike superhero franchises like DC Comics’ Batman or Marvel's Captain America, they were sold to regular people featuring regular kids not at comic book stores or by mail, historically. It was very available to the average consumer. It's also the oldest family-run business, which takes us to why we're here today, because the Archie Comics publication has a pretty complicated history.

Max Frumes
Yeah. So, I mean, I think I consumed Archie Comics from, you know, bubblegum wrappers. You remember the rock hard candies that had Archie Comics embedded? In any case, the business aspect of this is fascinating. So let's start with the founding of this business to publish Archie Comics in 1939. All right. Who was Archie founded by? And then take us through to now who currently owns the IP and what's the fight?

Maria Heeter
So Archie was founded in 1939 by John Goldwater, Louis Silberkleit, and Maurice Coyne. The founders invented several characters of Archie, the main characters. There's also the delinquent Jughead Jones, Reggie, the bully, Moose, the sort of affable jock. And they saw a lot of popularity. When it came time to pass down the business, they passed it down to their children, Richard Goldwater and Michael Silberkleit.

But unluckily, in a very strange turn of events, they died within a few months of each other between 2007 and 2008. That's where the story gets a bit more complicated. The business was then passed to Jonathan Goldwater, a former music executive and a character in today's story, and Nancy Silberkleit, Michael Silberkleit's widow. Nancy was a former school teacher and did not have much experience in publishing. And these two, Jonathan and Nancy, did not get along.

The two sued each other in the 2010s with Jonathan Goldwater accusing Nancy of erratic behavior and Nancy accusing Goldwater of shielding company information from her, despite her having a 50% stake in the business. He has a 25% stake and also controls another 25% through his control of a trust owned by his nieces. So the two needed to work together and it was not working.

After the lawsuit, the two settled and largely agreed to keep the business separate with Nancy focused on comic books and Goldwater getting to do what his goal was all along to push Archie into the future with movie deals, TV deals, and even, yes, it is real, Archie NFTs. Although that did not take off.

Max Frumes
I'm sure at one point that was a great investment for the Archie NFTs.

Maria Heeter
If you got in early.

Max Frumes
Okay so this this takes us through to today all right yeah this this business empire around like you know around the archie universe and and other ip in the in the comic uh world uh you know co-run or co-owned by the goldwaters and the Silberkleits and you know Jonathan Goldwater ultimately is the one pushing for the use of the IP and a number of different creative endeavors and content.

So let's talk about, what money did he need, right? And what deal did he actually sign in order to raise the money that he needed in order to produce or get to the point of getting the TV deal that is at the heart of this conflict?

Laurie Tomassian
Well, it all started when things seemed to be going pretty well. Goldwater succeeded in landing Riverdale on the CW, which ran for seven seasons until 2023. It was a big deal, but a Source familiar with the deal told us Goldwater thought the economics could be much, much better. And that's where Raven comes in. So in 2022, a year before Riverdale's last episode aired, Goldwater signed a sprawling deal with Raven that had two parts. The first part was a $40 million loan that helped Goldwater simplify his 25% stake in the Archie Empire. Goldwater himself provided a guarantee on the loan. This is called a bad boy guarantee, meaning that if he did certain things to jeopardize the value of the Archie assets, he could himself be personally liable for the full $40 million.

The second part was an agreement more akin to a movie deal. And this is where a new character steps into the story. James Macielo, a partner at Raven who moonlit as a producer. Macielo arranged the second part of this deal. And a source told us that Macielo hired a team to basically build an in-house movie studio. And Archie seemed like the perfect target. Compared to comic books, Archie's IP is underutilized and it is very recognizable.

So to put this deal together, Macielo did a couple of things. First, he set up a few new companies that were also financed by the $40 million loan. And then he took one of these companies and entered into character development style agreements through an option to develop Archie's famous characters and an outright exclusive license to develop several of Archie's less famous characters.

On Goldwater's side, he saw this deal as a partnership, a combination of Raven's capital, Macielo's media expertise, and Goldwater's oversight from his years of experience with Archie's characters. In his words, nobody on earth knows Archie better than me. But there was also an unusual sweetener to this deal, one we've never heard of in a credit deal before. Goldwater was given an option to buy a nearly $6 million Beverly Hills mansion for just $1. He says he exercised that option in 2023, but Raven disagrees.

Max Frumes
So, you know, Masiello, he's part of this asset-based lender, Raven Capital. He's also, I don't know, you know, going around Hollywood and Los Angeles making deals. I guess like trying to rub elbows with the Hollywood elite. And apparently just, you know, like one of the assets here is a Beverly Hills mansion, right? That's a great perk for, I suppose, somebody who's willing to sign a loan on pretty egregious terms. At what point did this loan start to go wrong and things started to unravel?

Laurie Tomassian
Right. So to pay the $40 million back, Goldwater needed to make a deal to monetize Archie's IP, either through a movie deal, a TV deal or an outright IP sale. And he was running up against a deadline to monetize. If he hadn't succeeded in monetizing by January 2024, he would need to immediately try to make a deal or sell the IP to pay his loan. This gave him less room to be strategic in his next steps. So a few months before the deadline, Goldwater still hadn't succeeded in monetizing.

In late 2023, he brought on extra help, the financial advisory firm Raine Group, to assist, but they failed too. We spoke to some producers who told us that it's very difficult to sell straight IP without a deal attached. Hollywood studios are struggling financially, which means they're less likely to scoop up standalone IP without a project attached. So Goldwater was in a pretty tough spot.

By April 2024, a new extended deadline for Goldwater to secure an Archie deal had come and had passed and Raven lost their patience. They declared a default and a few months later they demanded payment in full. At this point, Raven took more drastic steps to try to regain control over the situation. So let's go back to the companies Masiello created at the start of this deal, the companies that were borrowers under the $40 million loan and the ones that held the license to develop Archie's characters. Well, Raven seized the equity interest on those companies through a foreclosure sale in October 2024.

This step gave Raven a direct path to control the exclusive licenses of these characters. At the same time, in the background, Raven had a falling out with Macielo, who sued Raven over film ownership rights later that year. Macielo died suddenly in early 2025, leaving Goldwater without the one man at Raven who helped him set up this comprehensive deal.

Max Frumes
So a lot going on here, right? First, you have the IP that's co-owned by two families or two parts of the founding members of a family business. And and then you have Raven Capital and then within Raven Capital you have different factions that are now at war with one another, right? And then one of those factions dies, and that's the one that has the most information, if not aligned with the the family that that used to control the IP, right?

It's so dramatic. There's this default that's been pronounced, there's this auction that has handed over essentially the right to most of the IP for the characters that would have been part of whatever movie deal was in the works, but you still had someone going out there striking a deal. And then, then you have this Universal announcement that comes out, right? Maria, describe the scene at, at Raven Capitol and, uh, and just what happened in August, 2025.

Maria Heeter
So in August, 2025, the Hollywood Reporter and Deadline said Universal would make an Archie movie. According to court documents, we found out that that was set to be about Archie's parallel marriages as an adult between Betty and Veronica, drawing on the famous Archie Comics love triangle. While this could have been huge news for celebration – it's an example of 85-year-old IP headed to Hollywood – it was like a bomb dropped at Raven.

Raven felt incredibly betrayed. They said this was a violation of the license agreements with 18D Media, the entity which Raven controlled since the UCC auction the year prior, and their Bad Boy agreement, which let Goldwater be personally liable for the loan if he sold IP licenses without Raven's permission.

Goldwater said the license agreements didn't apply to the main characters, but Raven disagrees. In fact, this is one of the main issues that both sides still can agree on, according to court documents. What did those initial license agreements back in 2022 cover. Goldwater also said he was protected under his Bad Boy guarantee because he was acting in the best interests of Archie, a protection he claims he negotiated for at the time when the deal was made.

Raven says he's in disagreement with their loan. They demand the full payment of the loan. This time it's from Goldwater directly. They also asked to see the Universal agreements plus the agreements between another deal he negotiated between Archie and a wine company, which presumably would be labeling wine and beers with Archie characters. Raven also threatened to go to Universal with their demands if Goldwater didn't reply.

Goldwater was not happy with this turn of events. In court filings, he said, I'm stunned that Raven has not jumped for joy over this incredibly exciting and value enhancing development based on a single Archie storyline that elevates Archie's most famous characters into a feature film to be directed by extremely well-known directors. But Raven was not jumping for joy.

Max Frumes
Why do you think that is? It's so weird, right? Like, was there some sort of disclosure in the lawsuit about how Raven was cut out of the economics of the deal? You would think they would be happy.

Laurie Tomassian
Our impression is that Raven is not so much interested in where Archie and the characters go. And Raven is really focused on getting its loan repaid. At this point, when the Universal deal was announced, it had been quite a bit of time that Raven was really trying to recover on the loan, running a foreclosure auction, sending demand letters for repayment. So at this point, I don't think they were interested in seeing how the characters develop at all.

Max Frumes
Okay. Just would take way too long to produce a movie and who knows it's going to make any money, right?

Maria Heeter
And I think this also hurt from Masiello no longer being present at the firm. He was the one really championing the idea that underlying IP can be valuable. It can be created into something bigger. That's something more akin to an equity investment. There's upside if it goes well. But in this case, Raven is a lender and they wanted their $40 million back, plus interest.

Max Frumes
Yeah. So what are they doing to get that back? They gonna squeeze blood from a stone?

Maria Heeter
So they sue Goldwater himself, and that's how we found out about the story, to recover the full $40 million outstanding plus $9 million in interest and default penalties. Discussions between Raven's chief investments officer, Dimitri Cohen, and Goldwater broke down.

At one point, and this is heavily disputed between both parties, Cohen called Goldwater directly. Goldwater says in court filings that Cohen threatened to kick him out of his mansion where he lives with his family and financially, quote, destroy him. And he said that Dimitri called him with the tone of an organized crime figure. Cohen disputes this and said he was doing everything he can to get his money back to his investors. And that leads us to the situation we're in today.

Max Frumes
So we're in court. Right. And the status of this, there's a couple of different things that are going on, right? First of all, there's a foreclosure auction. Laura, could you explain the foreclosure auction process and where that stands right now?

Laurie Tomassian
Yeah. So last month, Raven ran a small advertisement in the Wall Street Journal's classified section for a UCC foreclosure auction, which represented a new tactic in its efforts to collect payment. And as you said, meanwhile, the litigation is still ongoing in the background.

This time, Raven was foreclosing on what it says is its collateral now that Goldwater has allegedly breached his personal guarantee. So this collateral is now the equity in Goldwater's family office, which owns a quarter stake in Archie. And that auction is set to occur on June 15th, which is less than a week away.

So what does this all mean? If this auction is successful, Raven could seize control over Goldwater's stake in Archie Comics. That would give Raven a direct voice in controlling the fate of the Archie empire's most valuable characters.

It doesn't appear that Goldwater has responded yet, but he has recently switched law firms to represent him in the ongoing lawsuit. He switched from Quinn Emanuel to a presumably less expensive law firm. But all in all, if he wants to keep his stake, he'll need to try to block the foreclosure in court. We'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Max Frumes
So many questions, right? So like, how much money does Goldwater have? Do we know?

Laurie Tomassian
We don't know.

Maria Heeter
I think that's pretty unclear. The one thing we do know is that the industry of comic book publishing is doing pretty poorly. So volume is way down. It's a similar story to just paper newspapers. People are getting comics and entertainment from other sources online. And so the business of comic books has really deteriorated.

And Goldwater has succeeded in movie deals. And Goldwater has succeeded in entertainment deals like Riverdale. There was also a show focusing on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch on Netflix. But a source familiar with the matter told us that the economics for Riverdale specifically were not all that good for Goldwater. So presumably he thinks he can make more by utilizing this Archie IP, but we don't know for sure.

Laurie Tomassian
And look, I don't think Goldwater ever sought to find himself in this situation. When he put himself personally on the hook for a loan, he thought he was structuring it in a way where he was protected if he was doing something for the greater good of Archie. From his perspective, this landmark movie deal is for the greater good of Archie. So I don't think he ever anticipated finding himself on the hook for the $40 million himself.

Max Frumes
The personal guarantee finds its way into a number of private credit facilities and is highly used to enforce upon these deals. We've written a couple of stories about lenders going after vineyards, ancient Bibles and the like. In this case, some Archie IP. And Maria, you've mentioned Riverdale and a couple of these others. So this story just came out, right? Like that was 2017 or when have some of these shows been produced?
Maria Heeter
Riverdale ran from 2017 to 2023. And in around 2023, when it was ending, that was just a year after Goldwater had negotiated the deal with Raven. So as he was seeing the end of Riverdale, he was looking for other ways to keep the Archie IP monetization, keep the Archie in Hollywood deal going.
Max Frumes
What does parallel marriages between Veronica and Betty look like? Is this like the Desperate Mormon Housewives series or is it parallel universes? Into the Spider-Verse…into the Archie-Verse?

Maria Heeter
I have to admit, I haven't read The Marriage Story, which is a comic book series focusing on Archie, Veronica, and Betty. I would imagine it's split so that in one life he's marrying Betty, the all-American blonde next door. And in another life, he is an heir to an amazing fortune from Veronica's father.

Max Frumes
Was Veronica the inspiration for the Hall and Oates song Rich Girl?

Maria Heeter
I don't believe so but there is …

Max Frumes
I mean The Archies was also turned into you know a cartoon about a band

Maria Heeter
If you're familiar with the song Sugar Sugar, that is Archie IP. Archie all around us.

Max Frumes
It really is. Archie is all of us. So what's the date of the follow-up here and the resolution, the potential resolution of this? And what's the status of the movie?

Laurie Tomassian
So the auction is set for June 15th. So we will wait and see if Goldwater files anything in the ongoing litigation to try to block the foreclosure. And then I guess the next step is to see what happens on that day. In the meantime, the status of the movie is unclear.

Max Frumes
And Maria, last question here, like, you know, how did you come across a story like this? And how did you know it makes for such an interesting write up for 9fin?

Maria Heeter
So I think that 9fin's audience is probably more familiar with the UCC Article 9 foreclosure auction than I am. But that is basically a mechanism where lenders can foreclose on an asset. It's much cheaper than a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. And the only stipulation is that they post it publicly. And we've seen Raven actually in previous suits put UCC foreclosure notices, which are basically notices saying there's going to be an auction, I reserve the right to bid for this asset, but it's open to the public.

So any public is able to come in and make a bid for an asset, which can be anything that anyone's foreclosing on. It's often real estate, houses. I've seen it for IP equity stakes and all sorts of things. And in this situation, I've seen them actually put adverts in USA Today, but I personally check the Wall Street Journal's classified section every day because I've actually gotten quite a few interesting stories from it. And that's where you can see these deadlines for auctions. So if you are an asset-based lender, it's probably a good place to look for scooping up some interesting IP. Although in most cases, the lender who is posting the notice is the one to bid for it.
Max Frumes
All right. What are the chances that someone comes in to bid and scoop up the Archie IP beating out Raven?

Laurie Tomassian
So this could go one of two ways. Raven could credit bid, as Maria alluded to, and put in a bid to essentially buy the IP itself, or the equity stake rather. Or someone can come in with a qualifying bid. Typically, there is a minimum threshold set. In this scenario, given that what's up for stake is a 25% in Archie Comics that has all of this ongoing litigation tied to it and maybe a complicated corporate history, it's unclear who would come in as a third party and bid. But I mean, if Universal came in and did that, that could be the biggest plot twist of all time.

Max Frumes
That's amazing. So, you know, stay tuned on Ninefin for the resolution of this saga and also for that type of enterprising journalism and storytelling. Maria and Laurie, thank you so much for joining us and for your work.

Laurie Tomassian
Thank you for having us.

Maria Heeter
Thank you.

Mr. Weatherbee
And now, the Riverdale Carnival presents The Archies!

Archie Andrews
Everything's Archie. (Hey!)
Everything's Archie. (Hey!)
Everything's Archie.

We're the Archies and we're here to say,
we're gonna make you happy in a special way.
We're gonna make you happy
in a special way.

Everything's Archie
Everything's Archie
Everything's Archie…