Entertainment One
Entertainment One, or eOne, is a multinational film, television, music and home video producer and distributor headquartered in Canada. They are the current distributor of Hasbro media content since 2020. They are also famous for producing Peppa Pig, Ricky Zoom and PJ Masks.
History
Entertainment One has its origins in 1970 as Records on Wheels and the music retail chain CD Plus. The chain was in the process of acquiring other companies to bolster its wholesale operations in music and home video, leading to its purchase of ROW in 2001. Its vice president of operations, Darren Throop, had joined the company after CD Plus acquired his Halifax-based record store chain Urban Sound Exchange. The combined company later became known as ROW Entertainment, with Throop as president and CEO. The company listed itself on the Toronto Stock Exchange as an income trust, meaning that its taxes were paid by its shareholders, rather than the company itself. Afterward, ROW began to diversify its operations into content ownership. In June 2005, it acquired the American independent music distributor and home entertainment publisher Koch Entertainment. In 2007, the company accepted a $188 million public equity takeover by Marwyn Investment Management to fund its expansion; the company was listed on London's Alternative Investment Market as Entertainment One Ltd.[1]
In 2011, eOne acquired Alliance Films, absorbing the company. This gave them the rights to the Alliance Atlantis trademarks and fanfare, with the rest of that company's businesses having been previously sold off.
On August 22, 2019, Hasbro announced that they reached an agreement to acquire eOne for US$4 billion. Throop cited that its goals to "unlock the power and value of creativity" were "[aligned] with Hasbro's corporate objectives", and would be enhanced by access to Hasbro's properties and merchandising capabilities.[2] The deal was completed on December 30th[3]. This deal led to the absorption of Allspark[4], with eOne's logo replacing Allspark's starting with Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy: Earthrise. Their first project since becoming a Hasbro subsidiary is an untitled Transformers animated film[5].
