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He-Man and the Masters of the Universe - Variety reports that a British business 'Has The Power' (and the entire Filmation library); can DVDs be far behind?
Posted by David Lambert
3/30/2004
The Variety Hollywood newspaper reports via Yahoo News that American rights to popular shows like He-Man, She-Ra, and even The Lone Ranger - all part of the Filmation library of properties - have been purchased from Hallmark Entertainment by a U.K. concern.
Filmation built their reputation on kids' fare, mostly animation, including such classic or cult shows like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, She-Ra: Princess of Power, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, Bravestarr, Ghost Busters (NOT the version with "Slimer", but rather the original show with the ape, both live-action and animated), Star Trek: The Animated Series, Gilligan's Planet, Jason of Star Command, Space Academy, Shazam!, Isis, Lassie's Rescue Rangers, My Favorite Martian (animated version), and various shows starring the likes of Superman, Batman, Aquaman, The Archies, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Tarzan, and Flash Gordon.
Hallmark has been the owner of the Filmation library for quite some time, and in recent years had been rumored to be interested in selling that set of properties as a single group. Toward that end, supposedly, the entire library of product was kept unreleased on DVD, to preserve the value of the properties to the eventual purchaser. The lone exception was a release of Fat Albert DVDs available only via direct order from Time/Life.
Now a great deal of the rest of that group may be a step closer to DVD release in the USA, finally, with the purchase of the library by London's "Entertainment Rights PLC". Here's what Variety's Adam Dawtrey had to say on the matter:
LONDON -- He-Man, She-Ra and the Lone Ranger have been snapped up by the U.K.'s Entertainment Rights, as part of a $20 million deal to to acquire the Filmation library from Hallmark.
The Filmation library comprises over 500 hours of animation programming, also including "Ghostbusters" and "My Favorite Martian."
These are the first major American assets to become part of the Entertainment Rights stable of characters, which includes Brit kids brands Basil Brush, Postman Pat and Little Red Tractor.
The company unveiled a 22% increase in sales to £29.5 million ($53.2 million) for 2003, and an operating profit of $1.1 million compared to a loss of $0.18 million the previous year. Net losses were reduced to $0.72 million from $1.98 million in 2002.
There's not much more to say right now, so we'll leave it there. Stay tuned for any more we can find out about this developing story. The sale occurred almost a week ago, and we have to admit that we missed it. So our thanks to the fine folks at ToonZone.net for catching it, and giving us the heads-up about it. We simply MUST have He-Man and She-Ra on DVD. Why? "For the honor of Greyskull, Adora."
