MarVista Entertainment

MarVista Entertainment is an independent production and distribution studio, located at Los Angeles. It was founded as Whamo Entertainment in, by Joseph Szew. In, his son Fernando Szew joined the company. Four years later, it was renamed to its current name. The new company was formed by Fernando; Whamo partner Mar Gaya joined as director of European operations in Barcelona. Senior VP of worldwide sales for PorchLight Entertainment Michael Jacobs became MarVista's president of production and distribution, and Anchor Bay Entertainment founder George Port joined as executive vice president.

History
Upon the company's rebrand, it had bought the worldwide rights, outside of Canada, to CBC's Tom Stone, retitled as Stone Undercover, and the worldwide television rights to the computer-animated film A Very Wompkee Christmas. In, MarVista signed a distribution deal with California-based MagicDreams for its animated series Kiddo the Super-Truck. As of, the show had been sold, through a feature film format, in numerous European markets.

At MIPCOM 2005, MarVista launched independent animated film Romeo & Juliet: Sealed With A Kiss, for which it handled the international outside-US rights. The feature was written, directed and animated by ex-Disney artist Phil Nibbelink, of Roger Rabbit and Fievel Goes West fame. Till then, he had also independently created the animated films Puss in Boots (1999) and Leif Ericson (2000), which were distributed by Liberation Entertainment; unlike the other two, Sealed with a Kiss mostly relies on frame-by-frame animation, which was completed over the course of four and a half years. As of today, this marks Nibbelink's last indie film. A Fairy Tale Christmas, the first in a series of animated direct-to-video films produced in partnership with Vancouver-based Waterfront Pictures

In, Saban Brands, a subsidiary of Saban Capital Group, Inc., selected MarVista Entertainment to represent the international television rights for the company's entire Power Rangers library of series. MarVista also started handling international rights (outside of Asia) of the Digimon series once Saban Brands acquired the brand in. MarVista Digital Entertainment (MVDE) was launched in 2014 to handle distribution and licensing of the company's digital content in North America.

Beginning after acquiring capital investments in 2011, the company also began creating its own television and feature film content.

In 2016, MarVista and Elijah Wood's SpectreVision announced an agreement to co-produce four horror and thriller films over the following two years.

In some non-US countries, Metro-Goldwyn Mayer owns some MarVista content.

Distributed content

 * Burbank Animation Studios films