Background A Squared Entertainment Andy Heyward's previous company,
DIC Entertainment, signed a TV series production deal in July 2003 with
Stan Lee's
POW! Entertainment for ''Stan Lee's Secret Super Six
. In 2006, DIC was in development on Secret Millionaires Club'' with
Berkshire Hathaway chairman
Warren Buffett.
A Squared Entertainment (
A2, A Squared) was formed by Heyward and his wife, Amy Moynihan Heyward, in 2009 as an animation company. The company had an initial four-show celebrity-inspired cartoon slate to be seen on AOL starting in Q4 2009 with the last starting in 2010. The four shows would then switch from a webisode format of 26 episodes of three-to-five-minutes, to TV with 13, 22-minute shows. The slate then consisted of
Secret Millionaires Club,
GiGi and The Green Team (working title),
Little Martha (working title) and
Kosmos.
Kosmos was a series to be based on
Carl Sagan's life as a famous astronomer. A2's first animated program was
Secret Millionaires Club, which features an animated Buffett as a secret mentor to a group of enterprising children.
Martha & Friends with
Martha Stewart and
Gisele & the Green Team with
Gisele Bundchen were created and launched by A Square. On December 7, 2010, A Squared launched
Gisele & The Green Team webseries in conjunction with AOLkids.com and
Gisele Bündchen. In April 2012, ''
Stan Lee's Mighty 7'' was slated to be developed for other media formats via A Squared Elxsi Entertainment LLC (A2E2). A2E2 was a joint-venture between
A Squared Entertainment (A2) and
Tata Elxsi formed in January 2011 which Elxsi ends in October 2012. Also in 2012, A2 took over Archies' ownership stake in Stan Lee Comics. By November 2013,
A2 had ''Thomas Edison's Secret Lab'' in development. GBI licensed Baby Genius in January 2011 to
Jakks Pacific's Tollytots division for a musical and early learning toy line. At Toy Fair 2012, Tollytots introduced the line with 20 products. In December 2011, Pacific Entertainment Corporation changed its name to
Genius Brands International, Inc. (GBI). Genius Brands digitized its
Baby Genius book line in July 2013 via a deal with Graphicly.
As Genius Brands Genius Brands International (GBI) was formed in November 2013 from the merger between A2 Entertainment and pre-merger Genius Brands (former Pacific Entertainment), with the Heywards of A2 taking over as top executives. Pre-merged Genius Brands CEO Klaus Moeller moved to vice president of special markets at GBI. GBI's board of directors included former California governor Gray Davis and American Greetings Corp. president-COO Jeff Weiss. The
Baby Genius video on demand subscription service launched in April 2014. GBI launched a VOD channel of children's entertainment called
Kid Genius in October 2015, through Comcast's Xfinity On Demand. In June 2014, Genius Brands agreed to license
Baby Genius,
Secret Millionaires Club and ''Thomas Edison's Secret Lab'' to
LeapFrog Enterprises for kids' learning tablets. The first few Leap Frog tablet apps from the deal were released in December 2014, with two for both
Baby Genius and
Secret Millionaires Club. GBI issued and sold 4.3 million shares of stock and warrants in November 2014 to investors and management at par $1. The raised working capital would be used for brand marketing, new property acquisition and development and the
Kid Genius channel.
2016–2019 Penguin Young Readers and author/illustrator
Anna Dewdney signed an agreement with Genius to develop animated content and manage licensing for the
Llama Llama franchise in February 2016. The products, from apparel to toys, are slated to arrive in 2016. In February 2016, Genius Brands and
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment announced a multi-year marketing and distribution agreement for four existing properties plus three under development. Existing properties under the deal are
SpacePop, a new original
Baby Genius series,
Secret Millionaires Club and ''Stan Lee's Mighty 7
. The new Baby Genius'' series would be relaunched on Amazon.com in September. The company paired for another Sony agreement in April 2016. This agreement was with
Sony Music Entertainment's
Legacy Recordings for the Genius Brands Music label. The label would have two age-focused imprints, for toddlers, Baby Genius, and children-to-tweens, Kid Genius. In September 2016, GBI had teamed up with
Rob Minkoff and
Shane Morris on a preschool animated series. The series is
Rainbow Rangers, featuring others of the rainbow magical girls, who protect the earth. The main characters designed were by Brittany Myers and
Ruben Aquino. At the time, the company expected to have the concept debut as a Q3 2017 special and a full series start in Q2 2018. Kid Genius channel expanded to a small network of on demand channels with its offerings first on Comcast on Demand with a Baby Genius TV channel. The company launched Kid Genius Cartoons Plus! on Amazon Channels starting on September 28, 2017. Plus included all GBI programming plus other acquired programming. Genius Brands Network in July 2019 added content from kids gaming company Tankee to its channels. In January 2017,
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment expanded its distribution deal to all properties and took an equity stake in Genius Brands. In November 2017, the company filed with the SEC to resell 1.65 million shares of stock. Genius issued a convertible debt round bringing in $4.5 million in August 2018 which was led by financier Robert Wolf of 32 Ventures and was oversubscribed bringing in both existing and new investors. In September 2018, Bank Lemi extended a $6 million bank facility allowing Genius to produce a second season of
Llama Llama.
2020–2023 In May 2020, the company's stock value jumped 2000% with four announced stock sales that month, after being put on notice by NASDAQ for low share value, which might have triggered delisting. The reason for the jump was the company's announcement of the launch date of its Kartoon Channel, and Mattel's Rainbow Rangers toys gaining shelf space at Wal-Mart in summer 2020. With an announcement of registering a stockholder stock sale on June 4, the stock broke its run up with a 13% drop. Kartoon Channel, which is the merger of its existing channels, launched on June 15, 2020, on four more platforms. On July 6, 2020, Genius Brands acquired exclusive worldwide rights to use
Stan Lee's name, physical likeness and signature from
POW! Entertainment as well as licensing rights to his name and over 100 of POW's original IPs. The assets will be placed under a new joint-venture with POW!, called Stan Lee Universe, managed by Genius.
Michael E. Uslan was hired to advise Genius on Lee Universe film and TV projects. Genius then arranged a publishing deal with
Archie Comics for Stan Lee Universe comic book imprint starting with
Kindergarten Cop adaptation title. On October 27, 2021, Genius announced they would acquire the Canada-based
Wow Unlimited Media for $53 Million, allowing Genius to expand to the country. The transaction was slated to be completed in Q1 2022, pending regulatory approval. The acquisition was completed on April 7 of that year. On January 4, 2023, Genius Brands announced that they would sell a 50% stake in the
Frederator shows
Bravest Warriors,
Bee and PuppyCat and then-upcoming series
Catbug to Japanese company
Toho International. The deal would allow the two companies to provide frameworks, to co-produce new content based on the properties and develop consumer product campaigns. Toho would also gain Asian distribution rights to the properties.
As Kartoon Studios 2023–present On June 26, 2023, Genius Brands announced that it would be renamed as
Kartoon Studios and would transfer its shares to
NYSE American. In July 2023, Kartoon Studios partnered with
VeVe to release
non-fungible tokens of Stan Lee, which sold out nearly instantly. That same month, they also announced the launch of a division for animated feature films under the name Kartoon Films. The division's slate of films was said to heavily utilize
artificial intelligence technology, and was slated to debut in 2024. In 2024, Kartoon Studios announced that they would create an generative AI toolkit designed for development and production for animated media, branded as Gadget A.I. (based on character Gadget from
Inspector Gadget), which is only used for the company and wouldn't be licensed out to third-parties. However,
WildBrain (owners of the
Inspector Gadget IP) held a copyright dispute to Kartoon Studios. ==Units==