Filmation - Ownership

Ownership

The Filmation studio was owned by The TelePrompTer Company in the early 1970s, then by Westinghouse (through its Group W Productions division, following its purchase of TelePrompTer's cable and entertainment properties) in 1982. In 1988 Filmation was purchased by the L'Oréal cosmetics company. L'Oréal promptly closed the studio on February 3, 1989 and ended Filmation's legacy. As a result, most of the staff was terminated on that same day. This happened a day before a new law went into practice requiring companies to give employees 60 days notice before a mass termination.

Filmation's last production was the feature film Happily Ever After (a sequel to the story of Snow White), released to theaters 4 years later in 1993. Also, at the time of the closing, two new animated TV shows, Bugzburg and Bravo (a spinoff of Bravestarr), were beginning production.

Since then, the IP assets have changed hands on a number of occasions. Most of the Filmation back catalog first come under the ownership of Hallmark Cards, through its Hallmark Entertainment subsidiary. However, since a large amount of Filmation's output was based on characters licensed from other companies, many titles which were also under the ownership of Hallmark were actually (and still are) under the control of other studios (such as Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros.).

In March 2004, ownership of the Filmation back catalog which was under the ownership of Hallmark was sold to a British company called Entertainment Rights. Entertainment Rights has since made the revelation that when Hallmark converted all of its Filmation shows to digital format in the 1990s, only PAL-format copies were made, with the original film prints apparently discarded. This was due to Hallmark's previously un-stated (but long suspected) short-sighted policy of only distributing Filmation shows outside of the United States. As a result, many of Entertainment Rights' DVD releases (distributed by BCI Eclipse in the United States) are based on the international versions (which have PAL prints).

Because they were taken from PAL-based transfers, without correction, these releases exhibit the so-called "576i speedup" effect in which the soundtrack plays 4% too fast resulting in the pitch being a half-step higher than it was originally (see PAL and Telecine for more information). PAL-NTSC conversion artefacts also include softness and ghosting. The exception appears to be at least four titles from ER's library: Groovie Goolies, Ark II, and both the live-action and animated Ghostbusters series. These series appear to have been sourced from original NTSC transfers for their U.S. release by BCI. Another exception, Star Trek: The Animated Series which was owned by Paramount Television, now CBS Television Distribution, is also in the NTSC format.

On April 1, 2009 it was announced that Entertainment Rights would be acquired by Boomerang Media and on May 11, 2009, it was announced that the subsidiaries and offices of Entertainment Rights would be absorbed under the name, Classic Media.

In 2012, it was announced that Classic Media, owner of the Filmation library, would be acquired by DreamWorks Animation.