Blue Ant Media has acquired fellow Toronto prodco marblemedia and its Distribution360 sales division, and the plan is to merge both companies’ production and distribution operations into one studio. 

Marblemedia execs Mark Bishop and Matt Hornburg will head up this new business as co-presidents, reporting to Blue Ant CEO and co-founder Michael MacMillan. The bigger entity now includes marblemedia, Blue Ant Studios, Saloon Media, Look Mom! Productions and distributors Distribution360 and Blue Ant International. 

“With Mark and Matt leading our combined studios and rights business, Blue Ant Media is well positioned in its growth as an international media company with production, rights and an established global channels division all operating at scale,” said MacMillan in a release. 

The company’s post-merger catalogue of children’s content includes dozens of popular animated and live-action series from in-house teams and third parties, such as Detention Adventure, Mimi on a Mission and The Inspectors from Blue Ant and marblemedia’s All-Round Champion, Overlord and the Underwoods and The Parker Andersons. More broadly, Blue Ant International represents 5,000-plus hours of content across all genres, with another 2,000 hours in the Distribution360 portfoliio.

Combining the studios sets the company up to create projects at scale, produce more originals and expand with more broadcast and streamer partnerships. Blue Ant’s Sam Sniderman will serve as its chief commercial officer, working with MacMillan and CFO Robb Chase. Blue Ant’s chief creative officer, Laura Michalchyshyn, will remain in her current role. And its independent Singapore-based studio, Beach House, will continue to operate independently. 

One notable synergy between the companies is unscripted content. Blue Ant owns and operates multiple linear and streaming channels dedicated to the genre, including the Smithsonian Channel and BBC Earth, and marblemedia has produced popular unscripted series such as Blown Away (Netflix) and Drink Masters, A Cut Above (Discovery). 

Pictured left to right: Matthew Hornburg, Michael MacMillan and Mark Bishop.