In 1985, CBS' head of children's programming Judy Price had commissioned an animated television series based on the Garfield prime time special series, later ultimately titled Garfield and Friends, which took three years for Roman to decide developing and producing the program before it eventually aired on the network's Saturday morning time slot, premiering on September 17, 1988. The aforementioned show was Film Roman's first regular series. In 1986, in an effort to expand and diversify the studio, Roman hired Marvel Productions VP of Business Affairs and his own personal attorney, Michael Wahl, as President and Bill Schultz, Marvel's Director of Development, to join in the company as the fledgling studio's VP of Production and Development. Garfield and Friends was expanded to an hour on CBS' number one rated Saturday Morning block and the studio grew to increase its capacity.
In 1988, the new management team developed, sold and produced a new series, Bobby's World, to the brand new Fox Kids Network, headed up by former Marvel Productions president Margaret Loesch. From 1992 to 2016, Film Roman took over the source production of 20th Century Fox's The Simpsons from Klasky-Csupo who had produced the one-minute teaser cartoon shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show as well as the animation for the first three seasons and the first two episodes of the fourth season (in total 61 episodes).[3][4]
In 1999, Film Roman's founder Phil Roman left and sold the company to form Phil Roman Entertainment, the studio that produced Christmas television specials including Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer (2000), but he remained a shareholder of the company and then subsequently rejoined in 2001 as a member of the company's board of directors[5][6]
At the same time, it attempted to get into the syndication market with the launch of Max Degree TV, which would have consisted of three shows, Mission Extreme from Steve Tisch, Sirens of the Deep from SFX artist Steve Wang, and a new Wes Archer cartoon Victor,[7][8] but it never got off the ground.[9]
In April 2000, The Harvey Entertainment Company became Film Roman's international sales representative and distributor in an effort for the former to branch out of its existing properties.[10] Within the same year, India-based software firm Pentamedia Graphics attempted to acquire 51% stake in the studio for $15 million, but the deal later terminated in 2001.[11][12][13]
