Longtime industry veteran Marty Turkel will head up SexZ Pictures, the production arm of Virginia-based LGI Digital. And the emphasis will be on feature production, not gonzo videos. “It’ll cost us at the beginning,” he says, “we know that, but we feel that’s the way to go.”
Turkel will be working closely with experienced feature directors. Roy Karch, another porn veteran, has signed on to shoot twelve productions. Other directors, with past credits from companies like VCA and Adam & Eve, will be announced shortly. The first SexZ movie, now being shot for January release, stars Ava Vincent.
SexZ will also release one European-made feature a month plus a line of four-hour DVDs comps of footage acquired from other companies.
Turkel left VCA Pictures, where he had been a highly respected sales executive for 18 years, last summer. Since he joined LGI, he has been renting office space from another manufacturer, but he’ll soon be moving into his own facilities in Chatsworth. “We’ll be setting up a whole staff,” he says. “I’m talking about editing, art department, production, sales, you name it. I’m going to be running the operation. It’s very exciting.”
Turkel points out that “LGI has stores back East, plus they distribute other people’s product. But SexZ Video is a separate division of LGI that will sell to distributors only.”
The SexZ website is expected to be up and running by mid-November.
Marty Turkel can be reached at (818) 339-2542.
