Cinar Films
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Formerly called
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Cinar (1976-2004) |
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| Industry | Television production, animation |
| Fate | Acquired by DHX Media |
| Founded | 1976 |
| Founders | Micheline Charest and Ronald A. Weinberg |
| Defunct | October 22, 2012 |
| Headquarters | Toronto, ON |
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Key people
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Michael Hirsh (CEO) |
| Divisions | Cookie Jar Entertainment Cookie Jar Education Cookie Jar Consumer Products Horn Rims Productions KidsCo Copyright Promotions Licensing Group |
| Website | www |
Cookie Jar Group was a Canadian media production and distribution company. The company was first established as Cinar, a Montreal-based studio that was heavily involved in children's entertainment. The company's business model, which included the licensing of its properties into educational markets, had a significant impact on its success; by 1999, Cinair held CDN$1.5 billion of the overall children's television market.
However, at the turn of the century, Cinar became the subject of multiple business scandals, including having been accused of obfuscating the involvement of U.S. screenwriters in its productions in order to continue collecting government credits for the production of Canadian content, accusations that the company had plagiarized the concept of one of its series, as well as the use of offshore accounts to transfer money out of the company. Over a decade later, the latter scandal would result in criminal charges, convictions, and fines for co-founder Ronald Weinberg, and three other suspects.
Having lost a large amount of its value, Cinar was sold in 2004 for CA$190 million to a group led by Nelvana founder Michael Hirsh, and re-named Cookie Jar Group. In 2008, Cookie Jar announced its intent to acquire the U.S. animation studio DiC Entertainment.
On August 20, 2012, DHX Media announced its intent to acquire Cookie Jar Group, in a deal that would make DHX the largest independent owner of children's television programming. The sale closed on October 22, 2012.
After their 1976 meeting in New Orleans, future spouses Micheline Charest and Ronald A. Weinberg organized an event for a women's film festival, and worked at distributing foreign films to US theatres. The couple moved to New York City and formed Cinar, a film and television distribution company.
In 1984, Cinar changed their focus from media distribution to production and moved operations to Montreal, where they concentrated on children's television programming (including Animal Crackers, Emily of New Moon, Mona the Vampire, and The Wombles), as well as the English and French dubs of the anime series Adventures of the Little Koala and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the Spain-originating TV series The World of David the Gnome, and the English dub of Ultra Seven. As a production company, Cinar was also involved in the work of Are You Afraid of the Dark?, The Busy World of Richard Scarry, Madeline, The Real Story of Happy Birthday to You, The Adventures of Paddington Bear, Space Cases, The Shoe People and its most famous work, Arthur, Zoboomafoo, Caillou and Plumo.
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Wikipedia