Mainframe Entertainment

The name or term "Mainframe" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Mainframe (disambiguation).

Mainframe Entertainment was a Canadian based animation studio, founded in 1993, which specialized in computer generated animation.

Their founders having established themselves with Dire Straights' ground-breaking "Money for Nothing" video, the company's first huge success was with their award-winning premiere series ReBoot. They were chosen by Hasbro to be the company to produce their big gamble; the Beast Wars televison series. This gamble went on to win an Emmy and became possibly Mainframe's most successful project. This led to more work, not only with the follow-up Beast Machines, but with a revival of fellow Hasbro franchise Action Man (which also aired on Fox Kids), the War Planets show/commercial and the CGI Spider-Man series for MTV.

Upon firing much of their writing and animation staff, Mainframe Entertainment began a slow descent in terms of critical acclaim and financial consistency, distracting themselves with direct-to-video Barbie, Max Steel and Scary Godmother movies. The company was purchased by Rainmaker Entertainment in 2006, and renamed as Rainmaker Animation. As Rainmaker, they produce animation for video game related projects, providing cinematic cutscenes for games such as Prototype, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand and Ghostbusters: The Video Game. Having failed to sell the animation studio in 2012, Rainmaker re-launched Mainframe as a television producer in 2013 with plans to release a continuation of ReBoot. At the same time, Rainmaker managed to enter the feature film animation business, starting with Escape from Planet Earth.