Bungie co-founder Jason Jones and Destiny 2 narrative director Margaret Stohl have launched Stone Kite, a Los Angeles-based transmedia studio that will debut with an original IP called One Zero One in early 2027.

Stohl serves as CEO. She co-founded 7 Studios with Lewis Paterson — later acquired by Activision — and is also the author of the Beautiful Creatures novel series. Jones co-created both the Halo and Destiny franchises at Bungie and wrote the original manuscript on which One Zero One is based.

The studio describes itself as a "world-building studio" and is taking a development model that inverts the usual adaptation pipeline. Instead of launching an IP in games or film and licensing it outward, Stone Kite brings creators from multiple disciplines into production simultaneously.

"I've spent my career creating books, games, comics, film and television, and I've seen how often the medium that tells the first story ends up defining everything that comes after it," Stohl said in a statement. "Stone Kite is about breaking down those old media silos. Instead of starting in one medium and adapting outward, we bring the best global creators from different disciplines into the room from day one to shape the world together."

The first IP

One Zero One centres on "a coming worldwide conflict between humanity and a rogue army of AI-driven robotic soldiers." It will launch as a four-part comic book series, with new issues released online for free in early 2027. Additional media projects in the same universe will follow.

The free-to-read release model is a notable choice for a new IP with no existing audience. It removes the purchase barrier for the first storytelling beat of the franchise, effectively treating the comic as audience acquisition for whatever games, film or television projects follow.

For a studio founded by one of the industry's most senior game designers, opening with comics rather than a game is itself a signal about how Stone Kite intends to build IP — world and narrative first, medium-specific products second.

The founding team

Stone Kite's founding executive team includes:

• Stephen Wacker, former media SVP
• Lewis Peterson, president
• Matt Johnson, film and TV VP
• Jeanine Schaefer, narrative creative director

The studio is already working with more than 250 creators from across the entertainment industry. Named collaborators include director and producer Jay Roach, comic book writer and artist Christian Ward, illustrator Kyle Lambert, author Stephen Graham Jones, and screenwriter Akela Cooper.

Jones on the origin

Jones framed the project in personal terms, tying it back to his roots as a consumer of science fiction before he entered game development.

"I used to bike fifteen miles along Lake Michigan to the used bookstores in North Chicago, and bike home again with a backpack full of sci-fi paperbacks," Jones said. "Margie was the first person to believe I could write a book of my own, the first person to read it, and the one person I trusted to help me develop it into epic entertainment that leaves the world a better place."

What it means

Stone Kite enters a transmedia market where game-originated IP — The Last of Us, Fallout, Arcane — has proven it can cross into prestige television, but where the usual pattern remains sequential: ship the game, then adapt. A studio structured to develop all media in parallel, with 250+ creators contracted at founding, is a bet that simultaneous multi-medium development produces more coherent and more durable franchises.

Whether that model scales depends on execution. The first test arrives with the free release of One Zero One's four-part comic in early 2027, and the media projects Stone Kite announces around it will indicate whether game development — Jones's core discipline — sits at the centre of the universe or on its periphery.