The Hollywood studio game of musical chairs continues. This time, Charlie Brown and Snoopy have found a new place to sit.
In the latest move with implications for the theme park business, Sony has acquired an 80% stake in the company that controls the Peanuts franchise. The reported $457 million deal gives Sony control of the 41% of Peanuts Holdings LLC that was owned by Canadian media company WildBrain. WildBrain will continue to manage parts of the Peanuts portfolio under Sony ownership, including producing new content for Apple TV.
Six Flags Entertainment Corporation recently exercised an option to extend its rights to use the Peanuts characters in North America through 2030. Peanuts first entered theme parks with Knott's Berry Farm's Camp Snoopy land in 1983. Cedar Fair obtained that license when it bought Knott's and carried those rights into its merger with Six Flags.
Six Flags also holds the theme park rights in most of North America to use the Looney Tunes characters under license from Warner Bros., which has agreed to be acquired by Netflix. The sale of Peanuts to Sony likely will raise questions whether Sony will renew the license with Six Flags when it expires in five years, or if Six Flags will choose to swap the legacy Cedar Fair parks over to Looney Tunes for its children's lands, should Six Flags hold on to that license.
Outside the United States, Peanuts is licensed to Universal Studios in Japan.
I get that broadcast TV isn't what it once was, but I really thought the value would have taken a tumble without the yearly specials on ABC. Clearly that was not the case, even if those specials, which were traditions in my house before the move to Apple TV, are not even an after thought for us. (Even as Apple TV subscribers.)
With its simple animation style, Peanuts is perhaps the perfect franchise for use in consumer-directed AI productions. That increases its value in the current IP market.
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I would never have guessed that Peanuts was a billion dollar franchise, but it looks like evergreen IPs are worth their weight in gold.