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Creator / DePatie-Freleng Enterprises

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David Hudson DePatie and Isadore "Friz" Freleng founded this animation studio in 1963 after Warner Bros. shut down its animation department. DePatie was the executive in charge of the then-ailing studio at the time of the shutdown, while Freleng had left the studio the previous year (following a decades-long tenure as a director) for a brief stint at Hanna-Barbera: the duo's new company leased the former animation studio building from Warner. Their first collaboration was the opening titles to Blake Edwards' comedy-mystery The Pink Panther (1963), featuring an animated pink feline of the same name. Due to his immense popularity with audiences, the Pink Panther character later starred in a long-running series of short theatrical cartoons released by United Artists (which also released the film), most of which were No Dialogue Episodes. (The first one, The Pink Phink, won an Oscar.) Other theatrical series included The Inspector, Roland and Rattfink, The Ant and the Aardvark, Tijuana Toads, Hoot Kloot, The Dogfather, The Blue Racer, Crazylegs Crane and Misterjaw, all of which were also released by UA from the mid-'60s to the late '70s. They also produced new Looney Tunes shorts from 1963 to 1967, with the majority of them (at least not the ones outsourced to Format Films) directed by WB veteran Robert McKimson, and would also animate new sequences for use in The Road Runner Show. The studio notably employed a myriad of veteran animators from The Golden Age of Animation, among them former Warner animators Manny Perez, Art Davis, Gerry Chiniquy and Manny Gould and Walter Lantz veteran La Verne Harding, some of whom remained with DFE (and its successors) until the close of the 1980s.

DePatie and Freleng also did a very long string of prime-time television animated specials in 1969, starting with an offbeat Richard and Robert Sherman musical with Bing Crosby, Paul Winchell and Mary Frances Crosby, titled "Goldilocks", [though not first broadcast till March 1970, ironically when Freleng's fellow WB director Chuck Jones released his final Dr. Seuss special, Horton Hears a Who], and then Allan Sherman as The Cat in the Hat, among many others through the pre–Marvel Productions Ltd. era. DePatie and Freleng also produced several Saturday morning cartoons, including Here Comes the Grump; Bailey's Comets (created by DePatie and Freleng "in association with Joe Ruby and Ken Spears"); The Houndcats, The Super 6; Super President (an Old Shame for DePatie, who admitted he was relieved when it was cancelled after one season); What's New, Mr. Magoo?; Baggy Pants and the Nitwits; The Oddball Couple; Return to the Planet of the Apes; The Fantastic Four (1978), and the later episodes of Doctor Snuggles, taking over from Topcraft. They also took the reins for TV adaptations of Dr. Seuss books after Chuck Jones' studio closed down. They would also animate the opening theme to I Dream of Jeannie (though not its Animated Adaptation, Jeannie) and the "Time for Timer" and "The Bod Squad'' PSAs for ABC.

Their biggest success in TV, however, would come after DFE was sold to Marvel Comics, following Freleng's return to Warners in 1979. The company was renamed to Marvel Productions Ltd., and produced some of the most famous animated shows of The '80s, including The Transformers, the first few seasons of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, and Muppet Babies (1984), as well as a small amount of Marvel superhero programs (including Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends). However, the going was rough at first — the DFE veterans, including David DePatie and Dennis Marks, weren't exactly fond of their comics counterparts (with DePatie being quoted by Jim Shooter as calling the Marvel Comics people "amateurish morons"); DePatie further refused to use any Marvel elements in the corporate branding. These internal issues (which derailed certain projects and gave others issues) wouldn't be ironed out until DePatie left MP for Hanna-Barbera in 1984. Margaret Loesch took over and immediately began cooperating with the comics side much more, including working closely with Stan Lee on projects, and added a CGI version of Spider-Man to the company branding. Loesch also repeatedly attempted more Marvel-based shows, but found little success in that area. In 1986, Marvel was acquired by New World Entertainment, a media company formerly run by Roger Corman that had ambitions of becoming a media conglomerate.

In 1989, as New World entered into financial trouble, Marvel Productions was separated from their comics bretheren... sort of; Marvel Entertainment Group was sold by New World, but NW kept Marvel Productions; not long after, New World was bought by the Andrews Group, the same company that had purchased the comics side! In any case, New World retained MP, and renamed it to New World Animation in 1993. By that time, Loesch has moved on to become the head honcho of the fledgling Fox Kids Network, and got her and Lee's dream project on the air: X-Men: The Animated Series. Several years later, New World was sold in its entirety to News Corporation, which in turn placed the Marvel/DFE catalog into Saban Entertainment (a co-producer of X-Men). Saban merged with Fox's Children's Entertainment division that year to form Fox Family Worldwide, Inc; New World Animation closed up shop around this time. Finally, in 2001, Fox Family Worldwide, Inc. was sold to Disney. Currently, with some exceptions, most of the all-original DePatie-Freleng and Marvel Productions/New World Animation library are owned by Disney, through Marvel Animation. The rest of New World's library (not including their pre-1984 library, currently in the hands of Shout! Factory, their 1984-90 theatrical catalog, currently owned by Vine Alternative Investments, or parts of their TV library which are now owned by Sony Pictures Television) would later be sold to Disney as part of its merger with 21st Century Fox, the legal successor to News Corporation, in March 2019 (New World itself still lives on as the licensee name for television stations still managed by the spun-out Fox, which consists of the remnants of News Corp not sold to Disney).

One of the company's animators, Nelson Shin, was also the creator of the Star Wars Lightsaber effect for A New Hope (of which the studio received credit for) and the founder of South Korean animation studio AKOM.

Animated programs/movies made under the Marvel Productions name (entries marked with an * mean it was co-produced with Sunbow Entertainment):

Alternative Title(s): Depatie Freleng

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