Hasbro Plans To Sell EOne TV & Film Business; Sheds Scripted Dramas And Unscripted Content To Focus On Core Brands

TV & Film

Nov 18

Hasbro’s board has approved moving forward with putting part of Entertainment One (eOne)’s TV and film business up for sale. This part is specifically the areas not under the Hasbro brand, the aspects already within eOne’s brand, and not those moved there while under Hasbro’s ownership. This is the result of new CEO Chris Cocks’s review of the business.

To be clear, the parts of eOne going up for sale are the non-Hasbro branded film and scripted TV business producing and financing content like The Woman King, Yellowjackets, The Rookie and its spinoff The Rookie Feds, the stake in Entertainment One Canada Limited’s Canadian film and TV business, and Hasbro’s unscripted division, which includes the Naked and Afraid franchise. Basically, the adult-skewing properties. Hasbro plans to drastically grow its strategic investment in its own major brands with a focus on gaming, direct-to-consumer products, franchise brands, and licensing. This includes eOne’s Family Brands, like juggernaut Peppa Pig, as they are unaffected. The company will maintain “significant development, production and financing capabilities to support its core brands” across television and movies, whether live-action or animated (or both!) as well as digital shorts. Other core brands, rest assured, prioritized for investment include Transformers, Power Rangers, My Little Pony, Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, Play-Doh, and board games including Monopoly and Clue. Beyond that includes the development of new IPs such as the recently revealed Kiya and the Kimoja Heroes, scheduled to arrive on Disney Junior and Disney+ in 2023.

Chris Cocks, the former Wizards of the Coast president who was named Hasbro CEO in February, says he has received calls from several interested parties. Former CEO Brian Goldner, who was the mind behind the $4 billion acquisition of eOne in 2019, died of cancer a year ago.

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