Sony grabbed control of Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang in a new mega-deal that gives the company access to the famous group of characters for its movies, video games and other content.
The Japanese entertainment giant, a leading player in movie production and video games, will pay more than $450 million to double its stake in Peanuts Holdings to 80%, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The company is buying the stake from Canadian entertainment company WildBrain, which also owns the Teletubbies and Strawberry Shortcake brands.
The family of “Peanuts” creator Charles M. Schulz will retain the remaining 20% stake in the lucrative business, the report said.
Sony first got involved with the Peanuts characters in 2010 as the business’s agent in Japan.
WildBrain bought the Peanuts business in 2017 and sold a 39% stake to Sony a year later. The deal announced Friday, increases Sony’s stake to a whopping 80%, and it values the business at more than $1 billion.
Despite the Sony deal, consumers can expect to see Peanuts content on Apple TV+ for the next five years. Peanuts Holdings struck a licensing deal with Apple TV+, which was renewed in October through 2030.
The animated “The Peanuts Movie” produced and distributed by 20th Century Fox in 2015 reeled in more than $200 million, and for three decades Snoopy was a face of insurance company MetLife.
Charlie Brown and his friends first appeared in American newspaper comic strips in 1947 under the name
“Li’l Folks.”
The Peanuts name was introduced three years later and became an early global franchise in entertainment, with toys, films and holiday specials still shown on TV, including 1965’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas” with its iconic soundtrack by composer and jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi.
Those cartoons — which include famous images of Lucy pulling the football from Charlie Brown, Snoopy contemplating life on top of his doghouse and the gang dancing, have all been burnished into pop culture for its Schulz’s timeless messages about humanity, vulnerabilities and triumphs.
For its part, Sony — which is known for its PlayStation video game console, as well as blockbusters like “Men in Black 3,” the James Bond flick “Skyfall” and the “Spider-Man” franchise which is a joint-venture with Disney’s Marvel — has spent billions on acquisitions in the entertainment and gaming space.
It spent more than $300 million to increase its holding in publishing house Kadokawa late last year, and in July of this year, the company said it planned to pay around $460 million for a stake in Bandai Namco Holdings, home of Pac-Man and Tekken video games.
In September, Sony spun off its $9.5 billion financial business to concentrate on the effort, The Journal reported.
Sony reported strong earnings in recent quarters, thanks in part to on the global success of its “Demon Slayer” movies, based on the popular manga series of the same name.
