Ottawa’s Funbag Animation Studio has completed a deal with Holland-based Philips Electronics subsidiary PolyGram Filmed Entertainment that will see PolyGram invest a 25% minority stake in the five-year-old toon company.
Besides the investment, PolyGram will enjoy a 30-day first-look deal for financing and distribution of original Funbag projects over a five-year term.
‘It gives us a partner with abilities that we didn’t have nor did we want to have,’ says Funbag’s co-owner and executive director of marketing Curtis Crawford. ‘We really didn’t want to start financing and distributing our own product. We wanted to remain a creative Canadian studio, and we have.
‘It was a really good opportunity to get an international partner that brings considerable financial and distribution capabilities to the table, helps us finance our own proprietary product, and allows us to have a little higher profile in the marketplace.’
Status quo
The investment will have little effect on the day-to-day operations of the studio, which employs 80 people. PolyGram Canada’s president Darryl Iwai will sit on Funbag’s board of directors.
Funbag will be hiring additional staff this year, not as a result of the PolyGram investment but rather due to ‘natural growth,’ says Crawford. The company will likely increase staff by 50% to 120 by the end of the year.
Crawford says the deal with PolyGram will result in the announcement of some new projects in the near future. ‘Our creative stuff has always been well received by the networks but we simply could not finance them. We’d get it 80% of the way there and then there was just no way to do it. This allows us to go over the top.’
Series and video
Funbag will continue to concentrate on tv series and video work with no plans for feature film, according to Crawford, who adds that 50% to 75% of Funbag’s work will remain service deals. ‘In the future we may expand into more children’s programming with puppets or cgi but we’d probably be partnered with people to do that.’
Funbag principals Crawford, Rick Morrison, executive director of production; Gordon Coulthart, executive director development; Don Spencer, executive director creative affairs; and Frank Taylor, executive director finance all remain with the Ottawa-based studio that has serviced such high-profile productions as The Simpsons, Ren & Stimpy and Captain Star.
In other PolyGram news, the Dutch company recently secured the rights to distribute the entire British Independent Television Enterprises catalogue in Canada.
PolyGram has been repping the Granada Television and London Weekend Television portions of the catalogue since March 1996 and has now added the Yorkshire Tyne Tees Television properties to its agreement.
brite is the international distribution arm of Granada Media Group. Holding over 11,000 hours of programming, it is the u.k.’s largest independent television distributor. Among brite’s series are Coronation Street, Cracker and Prime Suspect.
World Trade Organization
Backdropping PolyGram’s recent flurry of Canadian activity is the European Union’s decision to take Canada to the World Trade Organization. Challenging last year’s federal government decision refusing PolyGram the right to distribute nonproprietary films in Canada, the eu claims that Ottawa’s film distribution policy breaks Canada’s international trade obligations. The eu says Canadian cultural policy unfairly prohibits European film companies from accessing the Canadian market with nonproprietary films, while certain ‘grandfathered’ u.s. studios are exempt.
Funbag and brite join other companies with ties to PolyGram including Hollywood-based production companies Interscope Communications and Propaganda Films, and u.k.-based Working Title Films. PolyGram also has production pacts with Jodie Foster’s Egg Pictures, Tim Robbins’ Havoc, David Fincher, Alan Parker’s Dirty Hands Productions, Jane Campion and Tony and Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Productions.
PolyGram has film distribution operations in 13 countries including the u.s., Canada and the u.k