Maverick (company)

Maverick was an American entertainment company founded in 1992 by Warner Music Group and run by recording artist Madonna, as well as Frederick DeMann and Veronica "Ronnie" Dashev. It included a record label (Maverick Records), a film production company (Maverick Films), book publishing, music publishing, an adjacent Latin/Spanish language record label (Maverick Música), and a television production company. The first releases for the company were Madonna's 1992 coffee table publication SEX, and its accompanying studio album, Erotica (both released simultaneously); the book, notably, drew harsh criticism towards Madonna herself, despite containing no overtly explicit images of sexual penetration (or other sexual activities, for that matter), and only featuring one male model’s (flaccid) penis exposed. Nevertheless, Madonna has said that she “hit rock bottom” from the daily slander in the press. At its heart, the book was intended to be read as an erotic and irreverent “poetry journal” with artistic, vintage-style black-and-white photos, and a telling of fictional romantic escapades. Journalist and biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli considered the existence of Maverick Records to be an "anomaly", as Madonna became one of the first female artists to head a real record label, and one of the few women to run her own entertainment company. DeMann was bought out of the company for a reported $20 million in 1998. Guy Oseary increased his stake in the company and took control as chairman and CEO, thus Madonna was no longer the head of Maverick. Madonna and Dashev left in 2004 after a lawsuit between Maverick and Warner Music Group, in which Maverick had accused parent label Warner of not providing sufficient operating funds to compete against other, bigger labels for music acts. Since 2009, the label has been defunct; some of its acts were transferred over to Warner Bros. Records, directly. In 2014, the brand was revived as a management group, founded by Oseary, in-partnership with Live Nation Entertainment.