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Lionsgate Canada

Canadian entertainment company and a subsidiary of Lionsgate Studios

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 20, 2026
Entity authorityQ1344736
Source-derived summary

Lionsgate Canada (formerly Records On Wheels Limited, ROW Entertainment, Entertainment One and E1 Entertainment) is a Canadian entertainment company and a subsidiary of Lionsgate Studios. Based in the Entertainment District in the city of Toronto, the company is primarily involved in the acquisition and production of films and television series.

The company began on June 1, 1973 as the Canadian music distributor Records on Wheels Limited. After it was acquired by music retailer CD Plus, the company became ROW Entertainment; with its vice president of operations Darren Throop becoming president and CEO. ROW later acquired American music and home entertainment distributor Koch Entertainment. By 2007, the company—now known as Entertainment One—had begun to acquire other production companies and film distributors including Canadian distributors Les Films Séville and Alliance Films. By 2015, eOne had begun to expand its American operations, including investing in Amblin Partners, and acquiring a stake in The Mark Gordon Company.

On December 30, 2019, eOne was acquired by American toy and entertainment company Hasbro for US$4 billion. The company saw cutbacks under Hasbro, which sold eOne's original music distribution business (now MNRK Music Group) to Blackstone on April 26, 2021, and closed its theatrical distribution operations in Australia, Canada, Spain, and the United Kingdom on June 29, 2022, and July 17, 2023. The cutbacks were part of a planned sale of entertainment assets not strongly tied to eOne's children's entertainment brands, such as Peppa Pig, which would be folded into Hasbro's intellectual property and merchandising business following the acquisition.

On August 3, 2023, Hasbro announced that it would sell eOne's assets to Lionsgate (another Canadian-founded business, now known as Starz Entertainment) for $500 million.

Editorial summary

“Lionsgate Canada” enters the record as canadian entertainment company and a subsidiary of Lionsgate Studios. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lionsgate, Canada and Canadian can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1973, 2007, 2015, 2019—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1973. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Lionsgate, Canada and Canadian.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Lionsgate Canada” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Lionsgate, Canada and Canadian provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1344736. VIAF identifies the subject as 130585346. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1973, 2007, 2015 and 2019.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Lionsgate Canada”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Lionsgate Canada primary sources, Lionsgate Canada archive and Lionsgate research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Lionsgate Canada”?
  2. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Lionsgate Canada” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.