DreamWorks Animation announced today that it will acquire Classic Media for $155 million from Boomerang Media Holdings. Through Classic Media, the studio will have access to such family titles as "Casper the Friendly Ghost,", "Rocky & Bullwinkle", "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle", and "Lassie". With the new acquisition, DreamWorks Animation gets over 450 titles and more than 6,100 episodes of animated and live-action programming.
In a statement, DreamWorks Animation Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg said: "Classic Media brings a large and diverse collection of characters and branded assets that is extremely complementary to DreamWorks Animation's franchise business, and we plan to leverage it across our motion picture, television, home entertainment, consumer products, digital theme park and live entertainment channels".
Classic Media, which is headquartered in New York City, has approximately 80 employees, and operates offices in the United Kingdom and a division, Big Idea Entertainment, in Nashville, Tennessee.
And Sony is working to become the distributor of Dreamworks. I guess the Rankin/Bass specials will now be released by Sony vice WB. Also, maybe Veggie Tales will see blu-ray (we've got one)...who knows.
And yet, in this article, there is no mention of the 2 biggest properties that they also just acquired as part of this deal: He-Man and She-Ra. That's weird.
@ Adam - If you mean the series, they can't, and if you mean the movie, lord no.
Seriously, think this's DW getting a little TOO overconfident about their "Mr. Peabody & Sherman" movie, and, hearing that CM needed a buyer, thought they could buy the cow to get more milk. Unfortunately, most of the property movies (Mr. Magoo, Underdog, George of the Jungle) have already been -done-by Disney, and this was pretty much the last one in the bucket.
But, if it finally gets more Classic Media TV, Rankin-Bass and Toho/Godzilla on Blu, maybe Jeff will do the right thing by accident.
@ThePandaTrain: The DWA/Sony deal is strictly for distribution, like their old deal with Paramount (or new DW's deal with Disney). AFAIK, DWA will remain a publicly-traded, stand-alone company. My concern is, what will DWA do with VeggieTales? I hope they don't make it too slick for its fans...
When I was a kid I had a Kenner Give-a-Show projector. It used slides that, if memory serves, were about two inches square (or around a hundred millimeters). THAT was high resolution. The images were sharp and the colors popped. Just having that vague memory makes me want more cartoons on blu-ray. How 'bout some Hoppity Hooper!
DreamWorks Animation announced today that it will acquire Classic Media for $155 million from Boomerang Media Holdings. Through Classic Media, the studio will have access to such family titles as "Casper the Friendly Ghost,", "Rocky & Bullwinkle", "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle", and "Lassie". With the new acquisition, DreamWorks Animation gets over 450 titles and more than 6,100 episodes of animated and live-action programming.
How 'bout some Hoppity Hooper! 
