Photo Courtesy of www.ifp.org, via Flickr

Jeff Gomez turns entertainment brands into full-blown story universes. As CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, he has created multiplatform content for such intellectual properties as James Cameron’s Avatar, Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean and Microsoft’s Halo.

Starlight Runner also works with companies like Coca-Cola (the Happiness Factory), Mattel (Hot Wheels) and Hasbro (Transformers) to expand consumer brands into multiplatform experiences in the form of video games, comic books, websites and TV shows.

The key to creating successful story universes, according to Gomez, is working with the strengths of each medium. Every platform adds a complementary but consistent element to a story, and in turn, enriches the audience’s experience.

Sparksheet editor Dan Levy caught up with Jeff Gomez at the StoryWorld conference in San Francisco where he delivered a highly autobiographical keynote entitled “Worldbuilding and Mythology.” We asked him about branded entertainment, the hype surrounding “gamification,” and whether there’s room for print in transmedia storytelling.