Geneons Merger with Universal Pictures International Entertainmnent

According to an Anime News Network report on November 12th, Dentsu, the parent company of Geneon announced that it would sell 80.1% of its ownership rights to Geneon. To whom you ask? This may seem surprising to some, however the company that acquired ownership of Geneon is none other then NBC Universal's Universal Pictures International Entertainment.

In turn, Universal Pictures International Entertainment plans on merging Geneon with one its own studios named "Universal Pictures Japan." Although the merger will take place in February of next year, they have not released any plans on what the name of the resulting company may be. As some of you may know, Geneon itself is the result of many business decisions.

In the past Geneon was known as Pioneer Entertainment, and owned by the Pioneer Corporation. Fast forward to July 2003, a Japanese advertising and marketing firm called "Dentsu" acquires Pioneer Entertainment and renames it to Geneon Entertainment. Over the years Geneon has distributed a large quantity of well known anime series merchandise, and DVDs.

Will this business merger affect anime fans? Probably not, Universal Pictures is a solid company that tends to make great decisions. This is a little similar to how Disney decided to get into Japanese animation recently, and continue to create Japanese animation that is sometimes unknown to American audiences.

The resulting company from this merger will most likely be able to distribute much larger quantities of anime all over the world. Every year, it seems that more and more anime fan clubs pop up in the United States, and Japanese culture is still trying to make its way to European nations, Universal Pictures should be able to bring anime into the spotlight.