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| Company type | Joint-stock company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Entertainment |
| Founded | 1996; 29 years ago (1996) |
| Founder | Gert Verhulst Danny Verbiest Hans Bourlon |
| Headquarters | Schelle,, Belgium |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Gert Verhulst CEO & Founder Studio 100 NV Hans Bourlon CEO & Founder Studio 100 NV Anja van Mensel CEO Studio 100 Benelux Martin Krieger CEO Studio 100 International Steve van den Kerkhof CEO Plopsa |
| Brands | K3 Samson en Gert Kabouter Plop Maya the Bee |
| Owner | Gert Verhulst(25%) Hans Bourlon(25%) BNP Paribas Fortis Private Equity(25%) Vic Swerts(17%) 3D Investors(8%) |
| Divisions | Made 4 Entertainment Terribly Terrific! Productions Flying Bark Productions Plopsa Studio 100 Animation Studio 100 International Studio 100 Benelux |
| Website | www |
Studio 100 N.V. is a Belgian production company that operates television channels, animation studios and theme parks worldwide. The headquarters of the company is inSchelle, along with offices inBreda,Munich,Paris,New York,Sydney andLos Angeles.
Studio 100 was founded in 1996 byGert Verhulst, Danny Verbiest and Hans Bourlon. The three came together for seven years when they created the showSamson & Gert, in which Verhulst and Verbiest also starred.Samson & Gert started as a duo which announced television shows. Besides the production of their original show they started creating a new series calledKabouter Plop. Following the success of these two shows, the company expanded into new fields in 1999. Studio 100 produced their first movie that year, which was calledThe Gnome Treasure. Additionally, the company began to create the musical Assepoester, a Dutch spoken version ofCinderella. Studio 100 created their owntheme park. For the latter three, they required co-funding from theVlaamse Media Maatschappij. In 2000, they began to expand their offering when they acquired the girl groupK3 fromBMG.
In 2005, Danny Verbiest announced his retirement fromSamson & Gert, but also as a shareholder of the company. The shares were bought by Verhulst and Bourlon, but in a year later, the shares were sold to BNP Paribas Fortis Private Equity. With the new ownership the company ventured into the international, non-Dutch speaking, market by copying their original shows in other languages and creating new shows likeBumba.[1]
Their international expansion took flight in 2008 when they founded a Belgian digital television channel called Studio 100 TV,[2] an animation studio in Paris and Studio 100 Media, a German division to sell their content to the international market. Later that year they acquired EM.Entertainment, a division ofEMSports Media, for €41 million. EM.Entertainment owned a large library with classics such asVicky the Viking andMaya the Bee, a television channel called JuniorTV (which closed in 2022) and the AustralianFlying Bark Productions.[3] Over the next years, the company revamped the old classics they acquired and established a new cooking channel, called Njam!, in Belgium in 2010 and BeJunior in the Middle East and North Africa in 2016.
The year 2017 was the next big step for the growth of the company when they acquired the U.S.-based animation studioLittle Airplane Productions, and their subsidiary Studio 100 Media took a majority share in the Germany-based Made 4 Entertainment (m4e), a company with a wide catalogue with series likeTip the Mouse,Mia and Me and most of the formerTV-Loonland AG library. Their share was increased over time until they reached full ownership in 2020, after spinning off some m4e subsidiaries.[4] Their fourth animation studio, called Studio Isar Animation, was founded in 2018 by Studio 100 Media in Munich. In 2020, their animation studio Flying Bark Productions opened a second studio in Los Angeles.[5]
The theme-park division,Plopsa, also grew significantly. After taking full control of Plopsaland in 2005, they opened a couple of new theme parks inHasselt(2005),Dalen(2010) and co-opened a theme park inTorzym(2018). The division also owned theme parks inStavelot(2005),Haßloch(2010),Antwerp(2019), and created water parks inDe Panne(2015) andHannuit-Landen(2020). With expansions planned in four countries:Belgium,Poland, theCzech Republic, and theNetherlands.[6][7]
On 7 February 2020, the ownership of the group shifted again when Vic Swerts and 3D Investors acquired 17% and 8% of the shares respectively. After the transaction Gert Verhulst, Hans Bourlon and BNP Paribas Fortis Private Equity had a remaining 25% share each.[8]
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