Jam Filled Entertainment was founded in Manotick in 2007 by Kyle MacDougall, Phil Lafrance, and Jamie Leclaire. In January 2011, Jam Filled moved to a new location in Ottawa. On August 3, 2016, Boat Rocker Media acquired Jam Filled Entertainment.[1] On August 22, Jam Filled purchased the assets of Arc Productions, allowing them to expand into creating CGI animation in Toronto. Jam Filled opened a 10,000 square feet studio in Halifax, Nova Scotia in the fall of 2019 to work on more 2D animation projects.[2]
Jam Filled Toronto
The Toronto branch of Jam Filled Entertainment was originally established as Dan Krech Productions on June 24, 1985, as one of the first visual effects companies in Toronto. In 1987, DKP became the first company in Canada to have an in-house digital suite. DKP had produced visual effects and animation for over 2,000 commercials and long-form projects by 2000, many of them for U.S. companies. DKP moved to a new facility on Queen Street East in March 2001. American telecommunications companyIDT Corporation acquired DKP Effects on March 16, 2004,[3] leading to the company being renamed DKP Studios.
On 26 May 2006, Liberty Media bought IDT Entertainment from IDT, including Anchor Bay Entertainment and Film Roman, and merged it with the Starz cable network to form Starz Media.[4] Under its new management in 2007, the studio began a "Starz Shortz" program which has produced Bundle of Joy, Enter the Sandbox, Ormie and Lovebirds.[5] In 2007, Starz Animation took over animating Shane Acker's feature 9 from Attitude Studio, Luxembourg.[6] In 2010, the studio opened a major VFX wing to create all the effects for the new Starz Channel/Graham King Productions miniseries, Camelot, Alcon Entertainment's Dolphin Tale, and producer Avi Arad's family feature, Robosapien: Rebooted.
In April 2011, Liberty Starz sold Starz Animation to a Canadian consortium, and it was renamed Arc Productions. Under the new owner, the studio was planning to do more proprietary production.[7][8][9][10]
On August 1, 2016, Arc Productions announced that they were closing down the studio because they were filing for bankruptcy and locked out over 500 employees after telling them there was a payroll glitch and no one had been paid.[11] On August 10, 2016, following Arc's closure, Jam Filled Entertainment entered an agreement to acquire Arc Productions' assets in which they call "substantially all of the business".[12] Jam Filled Entertainment also acquired 248 of Arc's former employees. Later on August 22, 2016, Arc Productions was reopened as Jam Filled Entertainment's Toronto facility.[13]
In 2020, Jam Filled announced that they would no longer animate episodes of the original Thomas & Friends series after the 24th and final series, with Nelvana taking over for the 2D-animated reboot series, Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go.
