Universal Animation Studios
American animation studio
Universal Animation Studios LLC, formerly known as Universal Cartoon Studios, is an American animation studio and a unit of Universal 1440 Entertainment, a home entertainment division of Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, which in turn is owned by NBCUniversal, the entertainment and mass media division of Comcast. It has produced direct-to-video sequels to Universal-released feature films, such as An American Tail (1986), The Land Before Time (1988), Balto (1995), and Curious George (2006), as well as other films and television series. This studio rarely made theatrically-released films, focusing instead on direct-to-video/streaming films and TV shows.
The actual animation production is mostly done overseas, usually by foreign animation studios such as AKOM, Wang Film Productions, and Rough Draft Studios, while pre-production and post-production are United States–based. On August 23, 2016, after Universal completed its acquisition of DreamWorks Animation, the division was merged with DreamWorks Animation Television, which began producing a majority of Universal Pictures' family-friendly TV shows. The studio is one of Comcast's three animation studios, alongside DreamWorks Animation and Illumination.
History
Universal Animation Studios was established in 1990 as Universal Cartoon Studios, the animation division of MCA Inc., to produce television shows. It was originally a subsidiary of Universal Family Entertainment, which was headed by former Hanna-Barbera employee Jeff Segal. Its debut work was Back to the Future: The Animated Series, which was announced on March 22, 1991, and premiered on CBS on September 14 the same year.
In 1993, Universal Cartoon Studios was transferred as a joint-venture between Universal Family Entertainment and MCA/Universal Home Video, due to the tremendous growth in the children's home video market.
The public source identifies “Universal Animation Studios” as american animation studio. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Universal, Animation and Studios.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3551276. VIAF identifies the subject as 156341586. The Library of Congress control number is no2009115688. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1440, 1986, 1988 and 1995.
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This entry incorporates text from “Universal Animation Studios” 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.