Another member of the pinball community recommend I post this here as it may be beneficial to the homebrew community. During our most recent podcast (Special When Lit Pinball Podcast) interview with Nirmal Vasani (Sales and Marketing Strategist - American Pinball) he discusses AP moving to a new building that will feature two assembly lines for their own pinball machines with an additional third line for contract manufacturing and homebrew builds. They are also actively looking at homebrew machines for a potential manufacturing venture according to Nirmal.

If anyone is interested the link to the interview is below. I'm not trying to use this thread to promote our show so please don't take it as such. I will happily ask that the thread is deleted if I'm violating any rules or offending anyone by posting the link here. Again, another member of the community recommended I post this to spread the word that additional manufacturing options are becoming available for the homebrew community.

http://specialwhenlitpinballpodcast.com/episode-16-nirmal-vasani-salesmarketing-american-pinball

It's such an exciting time to have a vision and the skill set to create a homebrew machine right now. With Scott Danesi and Keith Elwin seeing their vision become a reality even more opportunities seem to be presenting themselves for similarly driven individuals. A great time to be in pinball.

If a machine shoots well enough and makes sense from a manufacturing standpoint I would imagine another theme could be integrated for an unobtainable license (similar to Archer becoming Iron Maiden).

Nirmal discusses both options as being available. Almost exactly how you described.

Gonna need some "quad-manufacturing" for that bad boy!