As Fortune reported Thursday, KISS sold its name, logo, and music rights to Pophouse Entertainment Group for over $300 million. Gene Simmons spoke on the deal in a new interview with People.
The bassist said that it felt right to the band, explaining:
“Life happens while you’re busy making important plans. We were planning our respectful, proud walking off into the sunset because we’ve been touring; we had been touring for half a century.”
But Simmons didn’t want endless touring until they couldn’t anymore. He added:
“I don’t want to go out there with my walker.”
KISS Announced The Avatars On Their Last Show
Pophouse Entertainment Group teamed up with the band last year to make digital avatars of Simmons, Paul Stanley, Tommy Thayer, and Eric Singer. They debuted during KISS’s farewell tour at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Following the deal, Pophouse CEO Per Sundin told Billboard:
“We have a lot of plans for KISS. We want to keep to the legacy. We want to extend and amplify it for new generations.”
The bassist also talked about selling their rights:
“KISS, the touring band is over. What Pophouse will do with our images, our music, and our personas is unlike anything anyone has ever seen.”
The KISS avatar show will debut in the United States in 2027. Simmons shared what to expect:
“We went to see the ABBA show, and it blew our socks off. And the technology since then has improved by leaps and bounds. We’ve seen sketches of what it will look like, and we looked like the X-Men.”
How Much Money Did KISS Spend On The Avatars?
The rocker previously revealed that KISS spent $200 million to create the avatars:
“There’s so much being planned, even beyond my comprehension. But they’re spending, oh, about 200 million [dollars] to take it to the next level.”
Paul Stanley also spoke with Ultimate Classic Rock in January and explained that the avatars would evolve over time:
“One thing that’s interesting is people, I think, perhaps even understandably, got the wrong impression initially of the avatars. Because at the Garden shows, we wanted to give people a glimpse of some of the things, or one of the things, that’s to come. But the avatars are really in their infancy. They’re far from where they’ll end up in terms of look and purpose. The purpose, ultimately, is not that we’re being replaced by flying avatars. It’s just another way of diversifying what KISS is.”
Now that the KISS catalog deal is done, Simmons is looking ahead to his tour with the Gene Simmons Band, his Rock & Brews restaurant-bar-concert spot, and his partnership with ilani Casino.