NCircle Named Exclusive North America Licensing Agent by Cake Distribution
NCircle Named Exclusive North America Licensing Agent by Cake Distribution
Agreement Encompasses Home Entertainment Rights to Skunk Fu! and Tiny Planets
DALLAS, June 9 /PRNewswire/ -- NCircle Entertainment today announced a five year North American home entertainment distribution deal with Cake Distribution, a distributor of international content for the children's, youth and family audiences, with a particular focus on animation. The agreement gives NCircle the DVD and digital rights to two animated television series: Skunk Fu!, currently airing on The CW4Kids (previously known as Kids' WB!) and Cartoon Network, and Tiny Planets, appearing on the Noggin cable channel, a Nickelodeon sister network.
"We are extremely excited about this new deal with Cake Entertainment. Both Skunk Fu! and Tiny Planets are properties with massive potential in the U.S. and Canada," said Debbie Ries, Senior Vice President and General Manager, NCircle Entertainment. "We look forward to the value that our partnership with Cake will bring to these brands."
The Skunk Fu! series targets children from the ages six to 11 and portrays the story of Skunk and his friends, who are in combat with the evil Dragon and his minions. Skunk must master the ways of Kung Fu in an attempt to defend their home turf, The Valley, whilst also learning patience and how to avoid getting into trouble. In addition to its September 2007 U.S. debut on The CW4Kids, the 30-minute series is being broadcast to a global audience across all major continents in Europe, Asia, North America, Australia, Africa and Latin America, including on ABC Rollercoaster in Australia and BBC in the UK. Skunk Fu! is a winner of the 2008 Irish Film and Television Academy (IFTA) award for animation.
Aimed at pre-schoolers, Tiny Planets is a UK television show produced by Pepper's Ghost Productions, Ltd. The CGI-animated program follows curious, furry heroes Bing and Bong on their adventures in the Tiny Universe -- a solar system made up of six planets, each with a designated concentration (nature, sound, light & color, technology, "self" and "stuff"). Tiny Planets helps children examine how things work, consider underlying relationships, strengthen observational skills and identify/test new ideas. In the U.S., the Noggin has aired its captivating five-minute episodes since 2003. Tiny Planets and its interactive Web site were the recipients of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award in 2001.
"As we build our brand globally, our strategy to team up with NCircle for their expertise at retail will provide a wonderful opportunity to build additional awareness of Skunk Fu! and Tiny Planets," said Ed Galton, Managing Director, Cake Distribution. "While the properties have built-in brand equity due to their broadcast presence, bringing our content to this market reflects our commitment to exploit multiple platforms."
Two DVD titles from Skunk Fu!, "The Art of Rivalry" and "The Art of Monkey Launching," and the Tiny Planet's "Bing Bong Bell" DVD are slated for release in December of 2008. For more information on NCircle or where to purchase Cake home entertainment, please visit www.ncircleentertainment.com.
About NCircle Entertainment
NCircle Entertainment, a division of Alliance Entertainment, LLC, licenses, manufactures and distributes family and children's programming and related images for home entertainment and consumer products. Alliance maintains the largest in-stock catalog of CDs and DVDs in the U.S. -- a combined total of more than 335,000 titles. The Company was named the 2007 Large Wholesaler of the Year by the National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM).
Alliance is a subsidiary of Source Interlink Companies, Inc. (NASDAQ:SORC) , a media and marketing services company, one of the largest publishers of magazines and online content for enthusiast audiences and a leading distributor of home entertainment products, including DVDs, music CDs, magazines, video games, books, and related items. Source Interlink serves more than 100,000 retail store locations throughout North America. Supply chain relationships include consumer goods advertisers, subscribers, movie studios, record labels, magazine and newspaper publishers, confectionary companies and manufacturers of general merchandise. You can learn more about Alliance at www.aent.com and Source Interlink at www.sourceinterlink.com.
About Cake Distribution
Cake Distribution is a London based boutique distributor of animation and family entertainment properties for television and beyond and handles world-wide distribution rights for SKUNK FU!, only excluding Licensing & Merchandising rights which are being handled world-wide by Galleon Plc. The current line up of Cake Distribution includes, a.o. ELIOT KID, AESOP"S THEATER, KING ARTHUR'S DISASTERS, EDGAR & ELLEN, LOOPDIDOO, TOTAL DRAMA ISLAND, TINY PLANETS and SKUNK FU! and the Scholastic catalogue for Europe only. Cake Distribution is a Cake Entertainment company. More info: http://www.cakeentertainment.com/
First Call Analyst:
FCMN Contact:
Source: NCircle Entertainment
CONTACT: Media: Nancy Zakhary, +1-212-986-6667, nancy@braincomm.com of
Brainerd Communicators, Inc. for Source Interlink Companies, Inc.; Tom van
Waveren, +31 651 139198, Tom@cakeentertainment.com, of Cake Entertainment;
Investors: Dean Heine, +1-239-949-4450, dheine@sourceinterlink.com of Source
Interlink Companies, Inc.
Web site: http://www.ncircleentertainment.com/
http://www.cakeentertainment.com/
http://www.sourceinterlink.com/
http://www.aent.com/
Profile: International Entertainment
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