Nelvana

Among the studio's first productions was a low-budget CBC short subject series, Small Star Cinema, which combined live-action and animation to tell stories of ordinary life from a child's point of view. It was followed by Nelvana's first ever television special Christmas Two Step in 1975, a similarly styled special in which a girl tries to be a lead dancer at a Christmas pageant. In the same year, he produced Mr. Pencil Draws The Line. When Nelvana was founded in 1971, their original goal was to make live-action programs involving animation in them during their early days.

Nelvana worked on their first television specials: A Cosmic Christmas (1977), The Devil and Daniel Mouse (1978), Romie-0 and Julie-8 (1979), Please Don't Eat the Planet (better known by its subtitle, Intergalactic Thanksgiving) (1979), Easter Fever (1980) and Take Me Up to the Ball Game (1980). During that time, George Lucas, who was impressed with A Cosmic Christmas, commissioned the company to work on a 10-minute sequence for the CBS and CTV TV film Star Wars Holiday Special in 1978. This short scene, officially entitled "The Faithful Wookiee", features the voices of Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Anthony Daniels, and James Earl Jones, and introduced the bounty hunter Boba Fett.

1980s

At the beginning of the 1980s, Nelvana chose to co-produce its first feature film, Rock & Rule, over working on Heavy Metal, internationally-produced animated science fiction anthology. Rock & Rule was inspired by The Devil and Daniel Mouse, took five years to produce and cost $8 million, using all of the studio's resources. The film was released by MGM/UA in 1983 with little promotion in the U.S. and was a financial failure. The company survived by working full-time on children's television series. These included its first three live-action franchises (The Edison Twins, 20 Minute Workout and Mr. Microchip), the first season of Inspector Gadget with DIC Entertainment, and the pilot episode of The Get Along Gang.

Early in the decade, the company worked on four television specials based on American Greetings properties. They were The Magic of Herself the Elf, based on Mattel's toy line; Strawberry Shortcake: Housewarming Surprise; Strawberry Shortcake and the Baby Without a Name; and Strawberry Shortcake Meets the Berrykins, the last three of which featured the eponymous doll. There were two shows made by Nelvana based on the AmToy properties, Madballs and My Pet Monster.

Despite the successes of their earlier works, perhaps its greatest success at the time came in the form of the Care Bears, thanks to its acquisition of the character rights from American Greetings, the franchise owners. In early 1985, the first film based on the toy line turned the company's assets around, grossing US$23 million in the U.S., and another $1.5 million in its native Canada. Its tremendous success gave way to two more feature films, A New Generation and Adventure in Wonderland, as well as a television series.

In the area of science fiction, Nelvana co-produced Droids and Ewoks, two Saturday-morning series based on Star Wars. At one point, there was talk of an animated CBS show from the studio, based on the BBC's Doctor Who; the plan never came to fruition, but concept art was created by Ted Bastien. The series would have been Nelvana's biggest to date. According to Bastien, "it was pulled out from under us" after a British animation studio told the BBC that it could do what Nelvana intended for a much lower price. The project did not proceed further, and no pilot was produced.

For Orion Pictures' 1986 live-action western comedy, Three Amigos, the company made use of lip-sync animation for a musical sequence in which the main characters sing a song at a campfire, with their horses singing along. In 1987, Michael Hirsh co-produced Nelvana's first self-made film of this calibre, the comedy feature Burglar, which was the first live-action feature film the company had ever co-produced.

Also in 1987, the company, along with independent filmmaker Pierre David, film, video, and television production company Malofilm Group, and home video distributor New Star Entertainment, formed Image Organization, an independent production company that mainly specialized in the thriller genre and tied itself to over 100 films in the international market by 1996. Nelvana and New Star would sell their shares in the company to David and Malofilm in 1989.

In 1988, Nelvana and Scholastic Corporation co-produced a video series of The Video Adventures of Clifford the Big Red Dog based on the 1962 book. It was also distributed by Family Home Entertainment on the video releases.

The company's fourth live-action series, T. and T., premiered in 1988 on Canada's Global network. The show's titular duo was Mr. T of A-Team fame, playing a former boxer named T.S. Turner, and Canadian actress Kristina Nicoll as an East Coast lawyer by the name of Terri Taler. Nelvana faced bankruptcy for the second time when the show's original U.S. distributor, Qintex Entertainment (formerly Hal Roach Studios) was going out of business; in six weeks, they were saved when they found a replacement. Also that year, Nelvana established BearSpots, a facility for producing television commercials that lasted until 1993.

As the decade came to a close, the revived Nelvana had its next big success with a film and an HBO television show based on Jean de Brunhoff's Babar book series. This franchise, its first international co-production, won many ACE Awards in the U.S. and Geminis in Canada. In September 1989, ABC began to air Beetlejuice, a show co-produced by Nelvana and based on the film by Tim Burton.

1990s

Following Babar's success, the studio acquired the rights to animated series based on Hergé's The Adventures of Tintin, Maurice Sendak's Little Bear, Joanna Cole's The Magic School Bus and the British comic strip Rupert Bear. Nelvana had self-made successes of its own during the 1990s, such as Eek! The Cat, Dog City (with The Jim Henson Company) and Ned's Newt (with TMO Film GmbH). Less successful was its animated series for children, Roseanne Barr's Little Rosey, for the American Broadcasting Company, which was cancelled in 1991, after its first season.

In Autumn 1993, Nelvana signed a multi-year project to co-produce five feature films for Paramount Pictures, with Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall co-producing; the first two began co-production the following summer, at a cost of over US$20 million each. Three of the projects were based on books by E. B. White (The Trumpet of the Swan), Clive Barker (The Thief of Always) and Graeme Base (The Sign of the Seahorse); an original co-production called Mask Vision was also in the works.

However, none of those films ever made it past the finishing stage. During the 1990s, another set of features from Nelvana was distributed by various companies. A 1993 live-action psychological thriller called Malice came out under the Columbia Pictures banner; 1997 saw the studio's retelling of Pippi Longstocking; and Babar: King of the Elephants was released in Canada by Alliance Atlantis in 1999. Among them, only Malice would go on to achieve box-office success in North America. Its US$46 million gross was the highest ever attained by a Nelvana co-production, doubling what the first Care Bears Movie received during its original release.

In 1993, Nelvana along with Galaxy Films and De Souza Productions co-produced Cadillacs and Dinosaurs for the CBS network, based on the comic book of the same name (formally known as Xenozoic Tales) by Mark Schultz. It only lasted one season.

In September 1995, Nelvana co-produced Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys based on the popular well-known book series. Tracy Ryan portrayed Nancy Drew while Colin Gray and Paul Popowich portrayed Frank and Joe Hardy, respectively. In addition, Jehene Erwin and Joy Tanner portrayed Bess Marvin and George Fayne, respectively, on Nancy Drew, while Fiona Highet played new character Kate Craigen. The series were based on The Nancy Drew Files and The Hardy Boys Casefiles. However, the series was not distributed well, mostly due to it being in first-run syndication, and both series were cancelled in December.

In September 1996, Golden Books Family Entertainment was in talks to acquire the company for US$102 million, just after having purchased the family video library of Broadway Video Entertainment, a subsidiary of Broadway Video. Many of the company's staff members, including Smith and Loubert, expressed interest in the proposition. But Hirsh went up against it, arguing with then COO Eleanor Olmsted about its possible effects on his institution. Two months later Golden Books withdrew from the deal stating that they would concentrate more on children's entertainment.

In November 1996, Virgin Interactive released Toonstruck, a PC-based adventure game featuring animation and artwork co-produced by Nelvana and Rainbow Animation. The game was set in an animated world using traditional 2D animation, but also featured the digitized likeness of actor Christopher Lloyd as a live-action character trapped in the animated world interacting with the cartoon characters around him. A sequel to the game was planned, but was cancelled due to poor sales.

In 1997, a small computer animation company called Windlight Studios was absorbed into Nelvana's assets. Its co-founder, Scott Dyer, became Nelvana's senior vice-president in charge of production in late 2001.

In late 1997, Nelvana and the United Kingdom's Channel 4 began work on Bob and Margaret, the company's first animated franchise for adults since Rock & Rule. It was based on the National Film Board of Canada's Bob's Birthday, an Academy Award winner for Best Short, which Channel 4 also co-produced.

In December 1997, Nelvana began distributing a syndicated programming block, the Nelvana Kidz Klub, through MediaVentures International, a Chicago-based distributor. The block was offered internationally on a barter program distribution model with one–two hours of daily sections or three–four hours of the weekend block.

In 1998, Nelvana entered into an agreement with U.S. network CBS to program a new Saturday morning animation block for the 1998–99 television season, which would be branded as the CBS Kidshow. The block would feature Franklin and the new series Anatole, Flying Rhino Junior High, Dumb Bunnies, Birdz, and Mythic Warriors; all six shows were billed as complying with the U.S. government's educational programming guidelines. In April 1998, Nelvana entered into an agreement with ITV franchise Scottish Television to co-produce these new series, and hold distribution rights to them in the United Kingdom. In August 1998, Nelvana acquired Kids Can Press, publishers of the Franklin and Elliot Moose children's books upon which Franklin and Elliot Moose were based. This turned them into an "integrated company" in which Kids Can's subsequent publications would begin with Nelvana's franchising of those works.

The company's first two computer-animated shows, Donkey Kong Country (with Medialab) and Rolie Polie Olie (with Métal Hurlant Productions and Paris-based Sparx*), premiered on U.S. television in 1998.

In March 1999, Nelvana reported a 75% increase in earnings in 1998, credited to increased original production and sales of its library programming, the deal with CBS, and the addition of a publishing business with the acquisition of Kids Can Press. In August 1999, Nelvana announced a US$40 million deal to produce six new series based on popular children's books for a planned PBS block. The six series—Corduroy, Elliot Moose, Timothy Goes to School, Seven Little Monsters, George Shrinks, and Marvin the Tap-Dancing Horse—were launched the following September as part of the PBS Kids Bookworm Bunch line-up. That same month, it acquired the North American rights to its first anime property, Clamp's Cardcaptor Sakura (which was renamed Cardcaptors for its English dub).

2000s

In April 2000, Nelvana announced that it had filed for two category 2 television licences from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to launch digital cable channels. The first, titled "The Nelvana Channel", would have presented the company's library of material alongside related information in a picture-in-picture format. The second, "Booknet", was to be focused on adaptations of adult and children's literature, and would have been a 60/40 joint venture between Corus Entertainment and Nelvana. The channels were approved that following November. Both licences expired as neither launched by the required date of November 24, 2004.

On April 14, 2000, Nelvana announced its purchase of the Palo Alto-based children's book publisher Klutz in a US$74 million deal—at that time, its largest buyout ever—and integrated it into its Branded Consumer Products division. The company, founded in 1977, was best known for its children's series, Books Plus. Nelvana's separate subsidiary, Kids Can, began taking advantage of the acquisition by making its output available through Klutz merchandise.

In September 2000, Corus bought Nelvana for $540 million. The company saw the purchase as being a complement to its children's television networks, including YTV and Treehouse.

A year after Corus' purchase, co-founders and co-CEOs Loubert and Smith left the studio. Loubert voluntarily left in November after Corus eliminated 50 positions from the staff, saying "The time has come that Corus will stop acquiring for a while and start operating. John Cassaday has made that clear, but this makes my job less rather than more".

In 2001, Nelvana acquired the rights to the English-language version of yet another anime series, Medabots. The following January, Beyblade (in association with Hasbro and Mitsubishi) became its third such property.

On November 5, 2001, Nelvana purchased all propetiary rights to Babar, excluding the franchise's publishing rights from the de Brunhoff family.

In October 2002, Corus announced Hirsh's resignation; the following month, Paul Robertson, former president of Corus Television and head of YTV, became leader of the studio's senior management. With Hirsh's departure, Corus announced a C$200 million writedown for the company; by next August, it planned to reduce the staff down to 200. Hirsh has also taken an advisory role in the studio.

The following September, Corus launched their home entertainment division. US-based FUNimation, along with British company Maverick, has distributed titles from the studio with this label, including Redwall, Pecola, Tales from the Cryptkeeper, Timothy Goes to School and the holiday special The Santa Claus Brothers. Nelvana's newer titles have been distributed by MGM, Lionsgate and ADV Films, which have no involvement with the label. In 2007, home video distribution rights for the company's catalogue were transferred to Shout! Factory.

In 2004, the studio co-produced an animation anthology, which included 10 recurring shorts. Titled Funpak, it aired on YTV for 13 weeks starting in February 2005, with the winning short announced to be greenlit in May of that year. One of the shorts, Sidekick, was the one adapted into a successful cartoon series from 2010–2013.

In May 2006, NBC Universal announced a joint venture with Nelvana, Ion Media Networks, Scholastic, and Classic Media, known as Qubo, which aimed to operate a multi-platform children's educational television brand in the U.S. featuring programming from its partners.

In September 2006, a major split for Nelvana was announced: the company's studio operations (under the Nelvana Studio name) was integrated into Corus' children's television division, headed by executive vice-president and general manager Scott Dyer who, in addition to Nelvana, oversaw YTV, Treehouse and Discovery Kids Canada while Nelvana Enterprises, was created in the process, handling international distribution of the company's library as well as licensing for Nelvana's properties and Corus' properties outside of Canada. Doug Murphy became president of the new distribution and licensing unit.

In October 2006, Nelvana announced a co-production agreement with Canadian toy maker Spin Master and Japanese partners TMS Entertainment, Sega Toys and Japan Vistec to create the new anime property Bakugan Battle Brawlers. The series debuted in Canada on Teletoon the following summer and became a quick success. In 2008, merchandising rights were sold by Nelvana to Cartoon Network in the U.S., and the series began airing on the channel in February 2008. The initial incarnation of the franchise ran for four seasons, spanning 189 episodes and stimulated billions in merchandise sales.