How it started
Formation and history
On July 20, 1998, Canadian production companies Alliance Communications and Atlantis Communications announced plans to merge their operations under a single company, Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc. The deal was fully closed on September 21. As President and Board Director of the subsequent combined Alliance Atlantis, Lewis Rose was responsible for leading the teams which arranged the merger financing of $545 million and which achieved in excess of $20 million in savings and synergies from the combination of the two companies in the year following the merger. (The merger was also parodied on Made in Canada, when that show's Pyramid Productions merged with a company called Prodigy.) After the merger, the company laid off 15% of their staff (much of them from pre-merger Alliance), and closed the former Atlantis sales office in Amsterdam. As part of the merger deal, Robert Lantos, founder of Alliance, signed a deal for film and TV production with Alliance Atlantis through his own firm, Serendipity Point Films.
At the time of the merger, both companies had launched various Canadian specialty television services; in 1995, Alliance launched Showcase Television while Atlantis launched Life Network (which has since been renamed "Slice"); in fall 1997 the companies launched History Television and HGTV Canada respectively. Earlier that year, Alliance Atlantis teamed up with Hallmark Cards to create Crayola Kids Adventures, a series of three direct-to-video adaptations of well-known children's novels. Atlantis had also been a major investor in YTV in its first few years before selling out to Shaw Communications and later, Corus Entertainment from 1999.
In 1998, the company purchased 75% of Cineplex Odeon Films. In 1999, German-based distributor Kinowelt took a 20% stake in the company alongside a 50% in their UK distribution arm Alliance Atlantis Releasing, which was renamed to Momentum Pictures in 2000. Also that year, the company secured the Canadian rights to distribute features by Destination Films. Also in 2000, it purchased the rights to CSI: Crime Scene Investigation from Disney's Touchstone Television. Another major deal in 2000 was a renewal of their distribution pact with Artisan Entertainment, including Canadian distribution of Artisan material, and UK theatrical distribution of Artisan films via Momentum Pictures.
The company expanded its business with its launch of its children's production label AAC Kids in 1999, and its nonfiction production label, AAC Fact in 2000. These labels were dissolved in 2003.
In April 2000, AAC Kids signed a European co-financing and distribution deal with German studio TV-Loonland AG. The distribution deal was valued at $14 million.
From Wikipedia’s article on Alliance Atlantis, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2