Jennifer Twiner McCarron (president, CEO, and Director) Barb Harwood (CFO) Matthew Berkowitz (CCO) Richard Goldsmith (president, Global Distribution, and Consumer Products) Sarah Nathanson (general counsel)
Thunderbird Entertainment, Inc. is a television and animation production company headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. Founded in 2003 as Thunderbird Films, it produces scripted, unscripted, and animated programming for domestic and international broadcasters and streaming platforms.
With offices in Toronto, Los Angeles and Ottawa, the firm operates several subsidiaries, including Atomic Cartoons, Great Pacific Media, and Thunderbird Releasing. On January 28, 2026, it was announced that Blue Ant Media had completed its acquisition of Thunderbird.[3]
History
Tim Gamble and Michael Shepard founded the company in 2003 as Thunderbird Films. In its early years, it focused on television production and international distribution of Canadian programming.[4]
In April 2013, Thunderbird acquired Reunion Pictures, producer of Alice and Continuum.[8] In September 2014, the firm acquired the British independent film distributor Soda Pictures.[9][10]
In December 2014, Thunderbird purchased Vancouver-based reality television studio Great Pacific Media (GPM), producer of the Discovery Channel Canada series Highway Thru Hell. GPM continued to operate as a subsidiary of Thunderbird, and its co-founder Mark Miller was promoted to co-president of Thunderbird in 2016.[11][12]
In July 2015, Thunderbird acquired Vancouver-based animation studio Atomic Cartoons; its CEO Jennifer Twiner McCarron was promoted to president of Thunderbird in 2018.[13][14] In August 2018, it was announced that Thunderbird would go public on the TSX Venture Exchange through a reverse takeover by Golden Secret Ventures.[15]
In January 2021, Thunderbird Entertainment named Richard Goldsmith, formerly of Cyber Group Studios, as its first president of global distribution and consumer products.[16] In September, Voss Capital acquired a 10.5% stake in Thunderbird.[17]
On November 26, 2025, Blue Ant Media announced its intent to acquire Thunderbird for $63 million.[18] The transaction was completed two months later. Blue Ant subsequently reorganized its studios division in February 2026, with Great Pacific Media being folded into Blue Ant Media's unscripted division and closed, and Atomic Cartoons being placed alongside Jam Filled Entertainment in a new kids & family division led by McCarron.[19]
In 2016, while remaining as CEO of Great Pacific Media (GPM) following its acquisition, Miller was appointed co-president of Thunderbird.[12] In 2019, three years after former Bell Media executive Paul Lewis was appointed president of GPM,[36] Wendy McKernan was named its vice president, while Lindsay Macadam (Motive) became head of a new scripted division that would focus on dramatizations of real events.[37][38]
In 2020, it was reported that Simon Barry and GPM were developing a biographical drama based on Wernher von Braun, adapted from Michael J. Neufeld's biography Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War.[39]
Thunderbird Releasing
Thunderbird Releasing (formerly Soda Pictures) is a British film distributor formed in 2002 by Eve Gabereau and Edward Fletcher. Primarily focused on independent and arthouse films, it was acquired by Thunderbird Entertainment in 2014 and renamed Thunderbird Releasing three years later.[9][10]
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$81.3 million (2020) [1]