Entertainment One: A Eulogy

     

This is The Chronicles of Trevor

Today marks a sad day in the film and television industry. Famed Canadian-American production company Entertainment One, which I will call eOne from here on out, has been sold by Pawtucket-based toy company Hasbro to film studio Lionsgate, for $500 million (USD). 

But first, a little backstory of eOne. This company was formed from the ashes of the Canadian entertainment conglomerate Alliance Atlantis, which went under in 2007 due to debt. In turn eOne's logos used the fanfare of the final Alliance Atlantis logo, performed by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

If you don't know why I'm not a fan of this deal, it's because Lionsgate has been known to strip the branding off of its acquired companies. For instance, when it acquired Summit Entertainment back in 2012, It didn't have any change. The only change in its identity was the addition of a Lionsgate byline in the its then-current logo.

But 6 years after the purchase of the studio, Lionsgate introduced this trash-dump of a logo, based on its own 2013 logo.

What the ever loving garbage stew is this cloudy crock of moldy sewage? This logo has NO SUMMIT! And "A LIONSGATE COMPANY" takes up 15 seconds, whereas SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT takes up 7 seconds of the logo. Y'know, the company that this logo is FOR?!

Other than that, I also hate how when they got the rights to make a classic Sesame Street compilation DVD, they copyright struck YouTube uploads of the clips to be featured on the DVD, even though I think that Sesame Street should be available to watch for free, without any hurdles and DMCA issues. Even official uploads from the Sesame Street YouTube channel got struck by the greedy money-hungry pigs at Lionsgate, even though Sesame Workshop, the producers of the show, actually gave Lionsgate the rights to those clips, and as such OWN the clips, not Lionsgate.

Also, with eOne being acquired by Lionsgate, it would also be harder to upload the opening and closing logos to logo-preservation YouTube channels like Broken Saw and LogicSmash, since Lionsgate is very stingy about their IPs and logos. They're not as stingy as the current rightsholders of The Rifleman, the Peter Rodgers Organization, who copyright strike ANY AND ALL uploads of JUST THEIR LOGO.

If I were in charge at Hasbro, I would have sold it to Fremantle Media, since they could use another film studio.

RIP Entertainment One ( June 2005 - August 2023 )

Fate : Acquisition by Lionsgate

Thanks for reading, and please join me in a moment of silence for the loss of a television and film studio with a breadth of good content.