Formerly | Wild Brain (1994–2007) |
---|---|
Type | Subsidiary |
Industry | Entertainment Animation |
Predecessor | Colossal Pictures BIG Pictures |
Founded | 1994 |
Founders | John Hays Phil Robinson Jeff Fino |
Defunct | 2017 |
Fate | Acquired by DHX Media |
Successor | |
Headquarters | Los Angeles, California, U.S. New York City, New York, U.S. San Francisco, California, U.S. |
Area served | Worldwide |
Products | Television series Specials Television commercials Licensed merchandise |
Parent | DHX Media (2010–2017) |
Divisions | WildBrain Animation Studios Kidrobot Ghostbot |
1968 | FilmFair is founded |
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1971 | DIC Entertainment is founded |
1974 | CPLG is founded |
1976 | CINAR and Colossal Pictures are founded |
1988 | Studio B Productions is founded |
1994 | Wild Brain is founded |
1996 | CINAR buys FilmFair's library |
1997 | Decode Entertainment is founded |
1999 | Colossal Pictures sells to Wild Brain |
2004 | Halifax Film Company is founded and CINAR rebrands as Cookie Jar Group |
2006 | Decode and Halifax Film merge forming DHX Media and DIC acquires CPLG |
2007 | DHX Media buys Studio B Productions and Wild Brain becomes WildBrain Entertainment |
2008 | Cookie Jar Group buys DIC Entertainment |
2010 | DHX Media buys WildBrain Entertainment |
2012 | DHX Media buys Cookie Jar Group |
2013 | DHX Media buys Ragdoll Worldwide |
2014 | DHX Media buys Epitome Pictures and Nerd Corps Entertainment and Cookie Jar Group closes |
2016 | The WildBrain multi-channel network was created and Studio B merges with Nerd Corps forming DHX Studios |
2017 | WildBrain Entertainment closes and DHX Media buys Iconix Brands Entertainment |
2019 | Epitome Pictures closes, DHX Media rebrands itself as WildBrain and the WildBrain multi-channel network becomes WildBrain Spark |
WildBrain Entertainment, Inc. (commonly known as WildBrain, stylized as W!LDBRAIN, also known as WildBrain, Inc., formerly known as Wild Brain, and later known as DHX Media Los Angeles) was an American entertainment company and animation studio that developed and produced television programming, motion pictures, commercial content, and licensed merchandise. Established in 1994, it maintained offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City. It had been operated in some form for 23 years before its eventual shutdown and repurposing of the brand name.
Its film productions included the Annie Award-winning CGI-animated short film Hubert's Brain , while its television work included the Nick Jr. series Bubble Guppies and Yo Gabba Gabba! , and the Disney Channel series Higglytown Heroes . WildBrain also produced earlier animated shorts and television specials of Monster High for Mattel.
They have produced national commercials for clients like Esurance, [1] Chiclets, Target, Nike, Honda, Kraft, the Wall Street Journal , and Lamisil (featuring Digger the Dermatophyte). Their ad work has won Clio Awards, ADDY Awards, BDA Awards, and Annie Awards. A subsidiary, Kidrobot, creates limited edition toys, clothing, artwork, and books. It had stores in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami.
In 1994, John Hays, Phil Robinson, and Jeff Fino founded Wild Brain in the Castro District of San Francisco, California. The new company bootstrapped with contract work from local game companies such as Broderbund, LucasArts, and Living Books. In 1996, Wild Brain moved to a 17,000 square foot warehouse at the corner of 18th St. and York St. in the Mission District spearheading the growth of what came to be known in San Francisco as Multimedia Gulch. In 1999, Austin, Texas-based Interfase Capital invested almost $17 million in Wild Brain.
Over the next few years, Wild Brain's staff ballooned from a staff of about 20 to about 250. It struck deals with Yahoo! and Cartoon Network to produce animated shorts for the web. It launched WildBrain.com, creating animated web shorts such as "Groove Monkee", "Mantelope", and numerous web series including Joe Paradise, Glue, Graveyard, and Space is Dum.
After legendary studio Colossal Pictures closed down in 1999, and with the financial backing of the Interfase companies, Wild Brain expanded further, providing employment for former Colossal directors and staff. Around this period, they produced the series Higglytown Heroes and Poochini .
In 2004, Charles Rivkin, former CEO of The Jim Henson Company, joined Wild Brain as president and CEO. Rivkin oversaw the creation and development of the series Yo Gabba Gabba! for Nick Jr.
In 2007, former founder Jeff Fino left to start Nuvana, an educational web-based company with former Colossal Pictures producer, Joe Kwong. Wild Brain rebranded to WildBrain Entertainment the same year.
In 2008, Rivkin left WildBrain after being named U.S. ambassador to France and Monaco. Michael Polis, the marketing director of WildBrain, then became the new CEO.
Around this time, John Hays left WildBrain to work on indie features La Mission and Howl , which opened the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.
By 2009, the original founders of the company had all left WildBrain. The company expanded its animation studios to Sherman Oaks in March, then closed its San Francisco office in June. It had been an independent company until DHX Media purchased WildBrain in 2010. The same year, Phil Robinson and Amy Capen, executive producer of WildBrain's San Francisco studio, started an independent company called Special Agent Productions. Robinson died in 2015 after a short battle with pancreatic cancer. [2] [3] [4]
In 2016, DHX Media announced the formation of a new London-based multi-channel network under the WildBrain name, focusing primarily on YouTube channels aimed towards children, such as content and original series from DHX's properties, as well as other forms of educational and toy-oriented content. [5] In September 2019, DHX Media announced that it would change its name to WildBrain outright, with the MCN unit being renamed WildBrain Spark. [6]
Klasky-Csupo, Inc. is an American animation studio located in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1982 by producer Arlene Klasky and Hungarian animator Gábor Csupó in a spare room of their apartment and grew to 550 artists, creative workers and staff in an animation facility in Hollywood.
Warner Bros. Animation Inc. is an American animation studio which is part of the Warner Bros. Television Studios division of Warner Bros., a flagship of Warner Bros. Discovery. As the successor to Warner Bros. Cartoons, which was active from 1933 to 1969, the studio is closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies characters, among others. Warner Bros. re-established its animation division in 1980 to produce Looney Tunes–related works, and Turner Broadcasting System merged with WBD predecessor Time Warner in 1996. In March 2001, Hanna-Barbera was absorbed into the studio.
What a Cartoon! is an American animated anthology series created by Fred Seibert for Cartoon Network. The shorts were produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions; by the end of the run, a Cartoon Network Studios production tag was added to some shorts to signal they were original to the network. The project consisted of 48 cartoons, intended to return creative power to animators and artists, by recreating the atmospheres that spawned the iconic cartoon characters of the mid-20th century. Each of the shorts mirrored the structure of a theatrical cartoon, with each film being based on an original storyboard drawn and written by its artist or creator. Three of the cartoons were paired together into a half-hour episode.
Sunwoo & Company, Co., Ltd. (㈜선우앤컴퍼니) is an animation studio located in Seoul, South Korea. It was established as Sunwoo Production Inc. in 1974. It began by producing animation mainly for Disney Afternoon TV series, such as Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, Bonkers and Darkwing Duck, and soon expanded by providing animation services for Nickelodeon shows like Rocko's Modern Life and Invader Zim, and other series like Duckman on USA Network and Fatherhood on Nick at Nite.
Wang Film Productions Co., Ltd. is one of the oldest and most prolific Taiwanese-American animation studios since 1978. The company, based in Xindian, Taipei and Los Angeles, California, has done traditional hand-drawn 2D animation/ink and paint for various TV shows and films for studios across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
Cartoon Cartoons is a collective name used by Cartoon Network for their original animated television series originally aired between 1995 and 2003 and produced in majority by Hanna-Barbera and/or Cartoon Network Studios. Beginning with its inception into cable broadcasting on October 1, 1992, Cartoon Network had focused its programming on reruns of older animated series which it had acquired through its parent company's film library. The Cartoon Cartoons label originated with Fred Seibert's animation anthology series What a Cartoon!, an animation showcase series featuring pilots of original cartoon ideas submitted by independent animators. Dexter's Laboratory was the first such pilot to be greenlit by the network for a full series in 1996. After other pilots were successfully produced into their own series, including Cow and Chicken, Johnny Bravo, and The Powerpuff Girls, the collective Cartoon Cartoons were featured on the network's Friday night programming block, Cartoon Cartoon Fridays from 1999 to 2003. Not all CN original series created around this time were officially recognized as Cartoon Cartoons; Samurai Jack, for example, did not bear the moniker.
Renegade Animation is an American animation studio located in Glendale, California which currently specializes in Adobe Animate/Toon Boom animation. It was founded by Disney and Warner Bros. animator and director Darrell Van Citters and his business partner Ashley Postelwaite in July 1992 in Burbank, California. The studio previously produced Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi for Cartoon Network, The Mr. Men Show for Chorion and The Tom and Jerry Show and Unikitty! for Warner Bros. Animation and is currently working on Tom and Jerry in New York for HBO Max.
DNA Productions, Inc. was an American animation studio and production company founded in 1987 by John A. Davis and Keith Alcorn, which is best known for its comedy films. It also provided directing, script writing, and production to its clients.
Augenblick Studios is an independent animation studio founded in 1999 by Aaron Augenblick, and located in Brooklyn, New York City. The company has created a wide array of animated shorts for television, film, and the Internet, with a target audience typically being adults. Their clients include Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, Adult Swim, the TED conference, PBS, MTV, and Nickelodeon.
Poochini is a short-lived animated television series which was originally aired worldwide on February 2, 2000, but it did not air in the United States until September 1, 2002. The series follows the life of a grey black-eared Hound mix named Poochini who runs away from home after his rich owner dies, gets captured by the dog pound and is adopted by an average American family.
FilmFair was a British production company and animation studio that produced children's television series, animated cartoons, educational films, and television advertisements. The company made numerous stop motion films using puppets, clay animation, and cutout animation.
Colossal Pictures was an entertainment company that developed and produced television programming, advertising, network branding, and visual effects. Colossal's work has won every major industry award, from the Clio, Emmy, and Grammy Awards to the Cannes Gold Lion and Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Top Honor.
Eric Ellenbogen is an American entertainment executive known for co-founding Classic Media and serving as CEO of Marvel Enterprises from 1998 to 1999. He is the chief executive officer and vice chairman of WildBrain.
Venus Centre is a Syrian dubbing studio. Venus Centre specializes in dubbing animation and children's programs to the Arabic language, especially Japanese anime. The company is based in Damascus.
WildBrain Studios is the in-house television studio arm of Canadian entertainment company WildBrain based in Vancouver, British Columbia, which was established in 2016 as DHX Studios.
WildBrain Family International Limited, operating as WildBrain Spark, is a British multi-channel network owned by the Canadian media company WildBrain. It distributes and produces children's video content for YouTube and other digital platforms. The division officially launched in 2016; it reuses trademarks associated with WildBrain Entertainment, an animation studio that had been acquired by DHX. It maintains offices in London.