Animation companies: Nelvana

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Nelvana Limited is a Canadian entertainment company, founded in 1971, that is well-known for its work in children's animation, among many things. It was named by its founders—Michael Hirsh, Patrick Loubert and Clive A. Smith—after a Canadian comic book superheroine created by Adrian Dingle in the 1940s. Corus Entertainment, a spin-off from Shaw Communications, has owned the company since September 2000.

Most of its films, shows and specials are based on licensed properties, mainly children's literature. But, as with most companies of its kind, original programming is also part of its roster. In spite of its status as a cartoon company, it ventured into the world of live action from its establishment up until the late 1990s.

Well-known franchises from Nelvana include Care Bears, Babar, Tintin, Rupert, Fievel's American Tails, Little Bear, Eek! The Cat, Franklin and 6teen, along with the North American dubs of the anime series Beyblade, Cardcaptor Sakura and Medabots. It also distributes the Nicktoons The Fairly OddParents and Danny Phantom, and the Cartoon Network original series My Gym Partner's a Monkey, outside the United States. As of 2008, its library comprises more than 1,650 cumulative half-hours of original programming.[1]

Nelvana started in 1971 when two graduates of York University, Michael Hirsh and Patrick Loubert, teamed up with a British animator-designer by the name of Clive A. Smith in Toronto, Ontario. Hirsh and Loubert, who had a passion for underground filmmaking, had founded a small company called Laff Arts in the late 1960s. Smith, whose interest was in rock n' roll music, had previously been among the crew for the Beatles' animated series and their 1968 film, Yellow Submarine.

Soon after they stumbled upon a collection of local comic books from the 1940s, the trio acquired the ownership rights. In turn, they made a half-hour television documentary for the CBC focusing on Canadian comics. Their two-year travelling tour of the art from the National Gallery of Canada, "Comic Art Traditions in Canada, 1941-45", gave locals a chance to revisit the country's past heritage in that field.[4] Meanwhile, Hirsh and Loubert collaborated on a related primer from Peter Martin and Associates, The Great Canadian Comic Books. Amid all this success, Hirsh, Loubert and Smith named their new enterprise Nelvana—after a Canadian comic book superheroine from World War II, Nelvana of the Northern Lights, who was one of the characters in the Canadian Whites canon.

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 1975's Christmas Two Step, a similarly-styled special in which a girl tries to be a lead dancer at a Christmas pageant.

Then, thanks to new talent from Sheridan College, all of whom were graduates of the institution, Nelvana worked on their first television specials: A Cosmic Christmas (1977), The Devil and Daniel Mouse (1978), Please Don't Eat the Planet (better known by its subtitle, Intergalactic Thanksgiving) (1979), Romie-0 and Julie-8 (1979), Easter Fever (1980) and Take Me Up to the Ball Game (1980). During that time, George Lucas, an aficionado of their work, commissioned the company to work on a 10-minute sequence for the CBS TV film, The Star Wars Holiday Special. This short scene, officially entitled "The Faithful Wookiee", would introduce audiences to the villainous bounty hunter Boba Fett, who would make his first theatrical appearance in 1980's The Empire Strikes Back.

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1980s
The high cost of Rock & Rule, Nelvana's first feature film, almost made the studio bankrupt.

At the start of the 1980s, Nelvana was offered the chance to work on Heavy Metal, an animated anthology of science fiction stories that studios in Canada and other countries were working on. Nelvana declined this opportunity, instead going on to concentrate on the production of its first feature film, Rock & Rule.

Based heavily on the earlier special The Devil and Daniel Mouse, and originally titled Drats!, the film was produced for five years using all of the studio's resources, totalling $8 million. Upon its release by MGM/UA in 1983, it received little promotion in the United States and quickly disappeared at the box office.

The financial demise of Rock & Rule would have ended Nelvana's operations altogether, had the company not saved themselves from debt by working full-time on children's television series. On its agenda at that time were its first three live-action franchises, The Edison Twins, 20 Minute Workout and Mr. Microchip. With DiC Entertainment, Nelvana worked on the first season of Inspector Gadget, and animated 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's 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 from Nelvana based on the AmToy properties, Madballs and My Pet Monster. Nelvana's work on the Care Bears franchise was among its earliest success stories.

But 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 movie based on the toy line turned the company's fortunes around, grossing $23 million in the U.S., and another $1.5 million in its native Canada. Its tremendous success gave way to two more big-screen movies, A New Generation and Adventure in Wonderland, as well as a television series.[5]

In the area of science fiction, Nelvana 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,[6] but concept art was created by Ted Bastien.[7]

For Orion Pictures' 1986 live-action western comedy, ¡Three Amigos!, the company made use of animatronics in one scene with a talking turtle. In 1987, Michael Hirsh produced Nelvana's first self-made film of this calibre, the Whoopi Goldberg comedy Burglar.

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The company's fourth live-action series, T. and T., premiered in 1988 on Canada's Global network. The show's title duo comprised of 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 American distributor was going out of business; in six weeks, they were saved when they found a replacement.[3]

....As the decade came to a close, the revived Nelvana had its next big success with a movie 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 one of the company's products: an animated series based on Tim Burton's Beetlejuice.

....In 2007, Nelvana acquired the rights to its fourth anime series, Bakugan Battle Brawlers. The series was aired on Teletoon and became a quick success. In 2008, merchandising rights were sold by Nelvana to Cartoon Network in the US, and the series began airing on CN in February 2008.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelvana