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The executive will leave the Hasbro division at the end of 2022 as he serves out his current employment contract.
By Etan Vlessing
Canada Bureau Chief
Darren Throop, president and CEO of Hasbro’s Entertainment One division, is set to step down at the end of 2022.
Throop’s current contract runs to the end of the year, and follows Hasbro acquiring eOne in 2019 as part of a $4 billion all-cash transaction. At the time, Hasbro looked to the eOne deal to make the toy maker into a media contender as it combined the indie studio’s film and TV unit with its own.
The pandemic disrupted that media strategy with a Hollywood production shutdown and delays in content deliveries as the industry reopened. More recently, Hasbro, under newly installed CEO Chris Cocks, has turned its focus to becoming a digital gaming powerhouse after fending off a proxy battle with an activist investor, Alta Fox Capital Management.
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Besides eOne’s film and TV division, Hasbro also acquired a licensing and digital division around kids properties like Peppa Pig, PJ Masks and Ricky Zoom. Hasbro said it will provide guidance on a leadership transition at eOne at the end of 2022 as Throop continues in his role until that time.
“Darren built a team with deep passion, creativity and talent and, on behalf of all of us at Hasbro, I thank him for his steadfast leadership,” Hasbro’s CEO said in a statement on Tuesday.
Hasbro added eOne has over 200 projects in development across film, scripted and unscripted TV, and there are 35 development projects in the pipeline for Hasbro brands, which includes Transformers, Magic and My Little Pony.
Throop got his start operating a chain of music stores out of Halifax, Nova Scotia. He became CEO of then ROW Entertainment in 2001, which then morphed into the Toronto-based eOne in 2007.
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