Penthouse Global Media has acquired OMNI magazine, bringing back to life the beloved and groundbreaking science fiction magazine. It’s a fitting move, as Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione co-founded OMNI in 1978 with his wife Kathy Keeton. The next print issue of OMNI will be available October 24.
“As Penthouse Global Media enters its second year under new ownership, our driving principle is to put all of the pieces of the brand back together again,” said Penthouse CEO Kelly Holland. “As a result of decades of neglect, much of this company’s brilliant legacy was lost… until now. I am proud to announce that one of those casualties, OMNI—the magazine of science and science fiction, heralded as one of Guccione’s most iconic brands—is once again a part of the Penthouse family where it belongs. Thanks in large part to Pamela Weintraub, one of OMNI’s original editors, who had the foresight to bring the brand back to life by re-registering the trademarks and launching a digital site, she, along with many of the original OMNI staff, will deliver the award-winning magazine to newsstands once again.”
“The acquisition of OMNI by Penthouse represents a powerful synergy overall,” Weintraub, who is serving as the current editor, said. “Both Penthouse and OMNI were created by Bob Guccione and Kathy Keeton as part of their cultural vision for the late 20th century, and since OMNI’s founding in 1978, sat side-by-side in the same offices, sharing the same coffee machines and the same editorial support. The two major brands of Guccione’s media empire, Penthouse and OMNI cast an edgy, iconoclastic gaze on the world, and the open, creative, energetic environment of Penthouse remains the perfect media lab for reinvigorating and reinventing a 21st-century version of OMNI for the Zeitgeist of today.”
OMNI published a print magazine from 1978-1995, and moved to an all-online format until it closed in 1998 following Keeton’s death. In 2013, the magazine found new life as OMNI Reboot, under the eye of editor Claire L. Evans. This iteration of OMNI, like the original, publishes articles about warp drives and artificial intelligence alongside sci-fi short fiction. In OMNI magazine’s pages, you could find William Gibson, Octavia E. Butler, George R.R. Martin, Ursula K. Le Guin, Stephen King, and other luminaries.
No word yet on which familiar and new names will appear in the October issue, but its intent is to address “the cultural yearning for science and innovation during a time of political uncertainty.”
