Hasbro's brands are officially under new management! Sort of.
Last Friday, Hasbro announced the leadership team of their new "Hasbro Entertainment" division, which will encompass all of their film and television projects going forward. The reorganization follows the sale of Entertainment One to Lionsgate; Hasbro is keeping the "Family Brands" parts, including Peppa Pig and PJ Masks, which they acquired along with the rest of eOne in 2019.
What actually changed?
Hasbro Entertainment's president will be Olivier Dumont, who was previously the president of the Family Brands division. Hasbro's press release emphasizes that the other members of the leadership team were also previously focused on projects based on Hasbro's brands. It seems as though Hasbro Entertainment is basically a direct successor to the Family Brands division, and not so much a complete reorganization.
Olivier Dumont will serve as President of Hasbro Entertainment, with Zev Foreman and Gabriel Marano serving as Head of Film and Head of Television, respectively. Foreman and Marano were primarily focused on Hasbro IP projects while at eOne and will continue this work in their new expanded roles directly for Hasbro.
Dumont's role was actually announced on August 3, during Hasbro's Q2 2023 investor conference call, so the actual purpose of the press release was to announce the promotion of Foreman and Marano. In his previous role, Marano co-oversaw "all Hasbro IP in live-action and adult animation", but not children's animation; it's not directly stated whether he will now also oversee the latter.
How does all this affect My Little Pony?
The sale of eOne means that Hasbro will move to an "asset-lite" model and will rely on other companies to produce films and shows instead of making them in-house. However, this is already the case for all ongoing MLP productions, which will likely be mostly unaffected by Hasbro Entertainment's creation, at least in the short term.
My Little Pony: Tell Your Tale is animated by the Malaysian company Lil Critter Workshop, and My Little Pony: Make Your Mark was animated in Canada by Atomic Cartoons. Although the film My Little Pony: A New Generation was animated in-house by Boulder Media, which was a subsidiary of Hasbro, Boulder Media was sold off in 2022, so the film is likely to remain the only G5 media to be produced in-house.
In 2021, character designer Imalou stated that Hasbro was originally planning to have Boulder Media produce Make Your Mark, and had proceeded far enough that Boulder employees were applying internally to work on it. However, Hasbro ultimately went with Atomic Cartoons instead.
I was supposed to work on this series, like, I applied in Boulder, but Hasbro, they ended up choosing a Canadian studio in the end, so, kind of sad about that. And the directors are a bit sad about that as well, because they wanted to keep working on G5, but I hope the Canadian studio will do great with the series.
While the new press release boasts that Hasbro Entertainment is currently dealing with "over 30 projects", this number includes shows that are already being released but are still continuing production. The only confirmed ongoing My Little Pony project is My Little Pony: Tell Your Tale, which we knew about already. According to Hasbro's plans for 2023 and 2024, Make Your Mark will conclude in November, and Tell Your Tale will see a 2nd season in 2024 (and potentially more in the future). This is unlikely to have changed, especially considering the difficulty and expense of doing so at this point.
If Hasbro is planning another MLP film, we would likely find about it soon after production begins. Nothing has been announced, so if there is ever another film, it'll likely be at least several years before anything materializes.
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