As CINAR
After their meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1976, Micheline Charest and Ronald A. Weinberg organized an event for a women's film festival and worked at distributing foreign films to U.S. theatres. The couple moved to New York City and formed CINAR, a film and television distribution company.
In 1984, CINAR changed their focus from media distribution to production and moved operations to Montreal, Quebec, where they concentrated on family-oriented television programming, including The Little Lulu Show, A Miss Mallard Mystery, Animal Crackers, Emily of New Moon, Mona the Vampire, and The Wombles, as well as the English and French dubs of the Japanese series Adventures of the Little Koala, Ronin Warriors, The Adventures of Albert and Sidney, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the Spanish television series The World of David the Gnome, and the English dub of Ultraseven. As a production company, CINAR was also involved in the work of Are You Afraid of the Dark?, A Bunch of Munsch, The Busy World of Richard Scarry, Madeline (specials 2 to 6), The Real Story of Happy Birthday to You, The Country Mouse and the City Mouse Adventures, Space Cases, and its most well-known works, Arthur, Zoboomafoo, and Caillou.
The firm became a public company in September 1993.
On November 1, 1996, CINAR announced that they would purchase the programming library and animation unit of the London-based FilmFair from the Caspian Group for $10.5 million.[2] After the deal closed, CINAR reopened FilmFair and utilized its acquired catalogue to launch a dedicated London-based European production and distribution studio - CINAR Europe in March 1997. The aim of the new subsidiary was to produce, with FilmFair; revival series based on existing properties including The Wombles and The Adventures of Paddington Bear, and bring the existing FilmFair catalogue to the world.[3][4] Following CINAR's financial issues and the scandal, CINAR Europe was put up for sale in September 2001[5] but was closed in February 2002. The closure led to CINAR's European partners, like Alphanim, to find other studios to co-produce shows with.[6]
By 1999, CINAR boasted annual revenues of $150 million (CAD) and owned about $1.5 billion (CAD) of the children's television market. In February 1999, CINAR acquired the film library of Salt Lake City-based production company Leucadia Film Corporation from the Leucadia National Corporation,[7] with the company's acquisition of 55 titles in the WonderWorks library following at the end of the year.[8] CINAR's rights to the Leucadia library and WonderWorks specials were purchased by Feature Films for Families in 2003.
CINAR also owned the dubbing studio Fandango Studios in Mexico City.[9]
Scandal
CINAR received over $50 million in tax benefits from the Canadian government. However, in 1999, the company was accused of falsely crediting Canadians for work done by Americans. Hélène Charest, the sister of Quebec Liberal Party leader Jean Charest, was listed on over 100 episodes that she did not write.
The success of Charest, Weinberg, and CINAR ended in March 2000, when an internal audit revealed that about $167 million (CAD) was invested into Bahamian bank accounts without the board members' approval.[10] CINAR had also paid U.S. screenwriters for work while continuing to accept federal grants and tax credits for the production of Canadian content. The names of Canadian citizens (generally non-writers connected to CINAR, including Charest's sister Helene) were credited for the works. While the province of Quebec did not file criminal charges, CINAR denied any wrongdoing, choosing instead to pay a settlement to Canadian and Quebec tax authorities of $17.8 million (CAD) and another $2.6 million (CAD) to Telefilm Canada, a Canadian federal funding agency. The value of CINAR's stock plummeted, and the company was soon delisted.[11]
There was some speculation that Hasanain Panju, CFO
Scandal
CINAR received over $50 million in tax benefits from the Canadian government. However, in 1999, the company was accused of falsely crediting Canadians for work done by Americans. Hélène Charest, the sister of Quebec Liberal Party leader Jean Charest, was listed on over 100 episodes that she did not write.
The success of Charest, Weinberg, and CINAR ended in March 2000, when an internal audit revealed that about $167 million (CAD) was invested into Bahamian bank accounts without the board members' approval.[10] CINAR had also paid U.S. screenwriters for work while continuing to accept federal grants and tax credits for the production of Canadian content. The names of Canadian citizens (generally non-writers connected to CINAR, including Charest's sister Helene) were credited for the works. While the province of Quebec did not file criminal charges, CINAR denied any wrongdoing, choosing instead to pay a settlement to Canadian and Quebec tax authorities of $17.8 million (CAD) and another $2.6 million (CAD) to Telefilm Canada, a Canadian federal funding agency. The value of CINAR's stock plummeted, and the company was soon delisted.[11]
There was some speculation that Hasanain Panju, CFO was the mastermind behind the investment scheme along with John Xanthoudakis of Norshield Investment Group and Lino Matteo of Mount Real Corporation.
As Cookie Jar Group
After companies like DreamWorks became interested in purchasing the company,[16] it was announced in October 2003 that CINAR would be sold to an investment group made up of Nelvana founder Michael Hirsh, former Nelvana president Toper Taylor and the private fund TD Capital, for over CA$190 million. The company would be taken private and relocate to Toronto, where Hirsh lived.[17][18] The deal was closed on March 15, 2004.[19]
Two weeks later on March 28, Hirsh announced that the company would rebrand and relaunch as Cookie Jar, which would comprise a combined entertainment division (Consisting of CINAR and FilmFair) and educational division (consisting of Carson-Dellosa Publishing and HighReach Learning)[20]
On August 20, 2012, DHX Media (renamed to WildBrain in 2019) announced that they would acquire Cookie Jar Group for $111 million; the purchase made DHX the world's largest independent owner of children's television programming.[34][35][36] The acquisition was completed on October 22, 2012.[37][38]
Following the conclusion of the sixth season of Johnny Test, DHX Media then retired the usage of the Cookie Jar brand on December 25, 2014, thus using the unified DHX name instead.
