Alex Ramirez Animation

Alex Ramirez Animation is an American animation studio owned by Paramount Pictures. Founded in 1980 by Alex Ramirez, the studio develops and produces animated films, TV shows, and short films and is best known for the animated films. The studio's most recent release was Jack and Jim Presents: Billy and Max on January 17, 2023, with their next films being Pucca: The Movie on August 25, 2023, TBA on January 5, 2024, Jack and Jim: Our Really Huge Adventure on February 9, 2024, and TBA on December 6, 2024. The studio's highest grossing film is Jack and Jim's Big Adventure with $521.6 million worldwide.

History
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Bankruptcy and reemergence (2018-present)
The company started to decline in it's recent years due to the box office failures of many films under their banner and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy at one point in 2019 due to poor box office for their recent films. A main factor of the companies decline came from the poor box office reception from their films throughout 2015 to 2018. During 2019, there were rumors of WarnerMedia interested in buying Alex Ramirez Animation with Ramirez himself working for the studio still. Despite the success of Jack and Jim’s Big Adventure, the studio still suffered a $100 million loss from the poor home media sales of their recent films. On June 9, 2020, it was announced that the studio took a $300 million write down due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as from pushing back Jack and Jim's Spy Adventure. In 2022, their film Alextoons: Race with Paramount Pictures received positive reviews by critics but underpeformed at the box office with a mere $92 million against its $70 million budget due to severe competition from releases.

The studio's next film, Jack and Jim Presents: Billy and Max was released on January 20, 2023 to negative reviews and failed at the box office, grossing $51 million on a budget of $40 million and $150 million including marketing, with an estimated loss of $90–117 million while also becoming the lowest grossing film in the Jack and Jim franchise as well as their lowest grossing film in years.

Attempted sale efforts/2nd bankruptcy and acquisition by Warner Bros. Discovery
Deadline Hollywood reported on February 16, 2023 that ARA had entered talks with private equity firm Colony Capital for the possible sale of its assets due to the financial shortcomings of ARA's recent releases. Other persons and companies that had expressed interest in acquiring ARA included rapper Jay-Z, Yucaipa Companies, Paramount Global, Lionsgate, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Legendary Entertainment, A24, Killer Content, Entertainment Studios, Netflix, Entertainment One, STX Entertainment, NBCUniversal, beIN Media Group (the current owner of Miramax), StudioCanal, Sony Pictures Television, Lantern Entertainment, rapper Jay-Z, The Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Skydance Media. The top contenders ended up to be Lionsgate, A24, The Walt Disney Company, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Lantern Entertainment, and Warner Bros. Discovery.

On March 9, 2023, Alex Ramirez Animation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and cited the recent performance of Billy and Max as well as a $100 million loss in 2022 from their lack of releases. Ramirez stated that he plans to explore options to keep the studio open and looking the potential buyers while he stated that "this all comes down to the performance of Pucca: The Movie." On March 10, 2023, Warner Bros. Discovery emerged as the winner of the auction with an stalking horse offer of $420 million with Zaslav stating that the studio intends to "make it our own 20th Century Animation to compete with Disney and potentially rival them" while proclaiming that Warner Animation Group is their Walt Disney Animation Studios and Alex Ramirez Animation will be their Pixar, while annoucing to hire top talent with Kate Mallory in talks of joining the company with the deal later being finalized that day and assets will officially be inherited in Warner Bros. legacy content. All upcoming films will still be released by their respective distributors but future films starting with Bloxie in January 2024, will be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures with the rights to their legacy content being transferred to Warner Bros. by 2025 while announcing a restructuring of the studio along with a possible rebrand under the Discovery name brand.

Direct-to-video films
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