Blue Ant’s Michael MacMillan ‘optimistic’ about future, sets sights on M&A opportunities

Despite starting his first business fresh out of university, all Michael MacMillan ever wanted to do was make movies. Business came second. Last summer, MacMillan took his latest company, Blue Ant Media, public on the stock market. Soon after, he announced separate acquisitions of two media companies. But before all of that, MacMillan was a film theory student at Queen’s University. By the time they were graduating in 1978, MacMillan and his pals, Seaton McLean and Janice Platt, said, “Let’s start a film company. Why not?,” he told The Wire Report in a December interview. “We don't have any real experience, we don't have any money, and we don't have any contacts, but we have an idea in our heads.” The three of them took on the tall task of making films on their own. MacMillan was the cinematographer, McLean the film editor, and Platt directed sound. As for the rest of the jobs, they took turns writing, directing, and juggling responsibilities. MacMillan and his crew founded Atlantis Films with only $300 of startup capital. Twenty nine years later, the once scrappy little startup sold for $2.3 billion. Business may have come second, but MacMillan had built an enterprise Becoming Alliance Atlantis It was not long before the Atlantis Films founders were hiring their first employees (who, according to MacMillan, were far more competent than the original trio). In year 15, the company went public. Five years later, in 1998, Atlantis Films acquired Alliance Communications through a reverse takeover to become Alliance Atlantis. But the company didn’t skyrocket overnight, or even in a few years. It grew slowly, over nearly three decades, teaching MacMillan that, in an industry as complex as film production, sustainability is just as important as speed. “You're not going to go from zero to 60 in a couple of years,” he says. But as the company grew, so did its aspirations. In 1984, Atlantis Films won an Oscar for its short film, Boys and Girls. Eventually, the company, which began by making modest budget productions, started branching out into more complex and expensive dramas, including the hit series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. In 2007, that growth came to a tipping point. MacMillan watched the stock market and the bond market soar. As the business grew, and the industry changed, the conditions of running a production company became increasingly complex. MacMillan decided it was time to sell Alliance Atlantis. “I was worried about the geopolitical scene in general,” he said. “And I thought it was time for us to sell after all those years.” After selling the company to Goldman Sachs and Canwest Global, MacMillan retired. Founding Blue Ant Four years later, in 2011, MacMillan unexpectedly found himself back in the game with a new startup. Missing the excitement of the film industry, and the cut and thrust of business, MacMillan co-founded Blue Ant Media. While he may have had three decades of experience to back his new startup, MacMillan was entering an entirely different landscape compared to when he started Atlantis Films. The technology was different, the players were different, the scope and size of the industry was different, and the viewing format was different. Viewers now had the option to watch what they want, when they want, where they want. With that new viewing proposition came more opportunities for subscription and advertising revenue. “It's confusing, maybe, but it's an exciting time to be making programming and figuring out how best to get it in front of viewers,” MacMillan says. But one thing that never changed was the skills it takes to be a winner. And MacMillan says the winners are the ones who learn how to identify and nurture talent, take risks on talent, and find a marketing angle that makes them stand out. “It was true a decade or two ago, and it's true today,” he says. “And the clever folks are going to have to figure out to distinguish themselves from others.” But MacMillan also attributes his success to the industry professionals who gave Atlantis Films a chance when it was coming up. “We were blessed with the number of people who took a chance on us,” he says. Nada Harcourt, the CBC TV executive who was in charge of children’s programming at the time, was just one of those people. Harcourt bought the first drama produced by MacMillan’s team, when they were still just a few years out of university. She then commissioned them for more short films, including the Oscar-winning Boys and Girls. “Nada took a chance on us, and was hugely important to our growth,” MacMillan says. Blue Ant today Upon founding Blue Ant, MacMillan adopted a business model not unlike that of the young Atlantis Films. Rather than taking on complex dramas that cost millions of dollars per episode, or creating content suited to specific audiences or regions, MacMillan aims to produce content with maximum reach. He swears by creating modest-budget, family-friendly content that can be streamed worldwide. For MacMillan, that often means low-risk, unscripted shows, such as Big Brother Canada, The Amazing Race Canada, and The Great Canadian Baking Show. Blue Ant also produces kids shows and animation, including The Loud House, and The Casagrandes. MacMillan says genres that are cheaper to produce, travel well, and have long shelf lives are usually in the lifestyle, reality, kids, crime, and documentary areas. “We’re not in the business of making $15 or $20 million per episode drama series for Apple TV or customers like that,” he told listeners at an investor relations webinar on Dec. 4. A big part of that vision is Love Nature, a Canadian television channel, owned by Blue Ant, that streams nature documentaries and series. When his company acquired the channel, it was called Oasis, and it rented the Canadian rights for wildlife and natural history programming, delivering for only Canadian audiences. Blue Ant changed the name to Love Nature, set its sights on a global audience, and flipped its business model to something with more potential for growth. “Instead of being the local renter of somebody else's program, we instead began to commission an annual slate of beautiful, new 4K wildlife and nationalistic programming that we owned,” MacMillan says. Earlier this month, Blue Ant announced it had renewed its partnership with Sky, a European media and entertainment company. The partnership allows Sky Nature to program Love Nature’s content across the U.K., Italy, and Germany. While Alliance Atlantis changed its content creation as it grew, turning to larger-scale, more expensive projects, Blue Ant doesn’t have the same path in mind. MacMillan says even if he were to grow Blue Ant to the size of his former company, he is happy with the business model it uses now. “One of the big mistakes that so many media companies make is over-levering themselves,” he says. “You shouldn’t be borrowing too much corporate debt. Having a strong and safe balance sheet is super important. And that sometimes means making sure that you cut your cloth or organize your activities to keep that strong balance sheet.” For the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2025, Blue Ant reported $204 million in revenue, up from $196 million the previous year. Profit, however, was $14 million, down from the previous year’s $18 million. In its fourth quarter ended Aug. 31, 2025, the company recorded a net income of $29 million, more than double that of the fiscal year. Blue Ant’s three reporting segments include global channels and streaming, production and distribution, and Canadian media. On the Canadian media front, the company owns seven paid Canadian TV channels, and operates 11 live event consumer shows. But creating content on a more modest scale doesn’t mean MacMillan is not shooting for the stars. When he founded Blue Ant, he set out to create another “Canadian-based, significant, internationally-focused, media company.” Jennifer Twiner McCarron, the CEO and Chair of Thunderbird Entertainment, thinks MacMillan did just that. In late November, Blue Ant announced that it would be acquiring Thunderbird for approximately $89 million. Both MacMillan and Twiner McCarron expect the acquisition to be finalized in the first quarter of 2026. Twiner McCarron says she has always had deep respect for MacMillan, calling him a “storied Canadian media CEO.” She says joining Blue Ant will help propel Thunderbird to new heights. “I've always had a dream of being a major global Canadian Studio,” she told The Wire Report. “And joining forces and getting the scale and the gravitas of Blue Ant was a no brainer from my perspective.” MacMillan is equally excited about the acquisition, and he says he has admired Thunderbird for a long time. “In acquiring Thunderbird, it will obviously significantly grow our business, particularly in the kids animation and young adult scripted areas,” MacMillan says. He added that the acquisition will deliver Blue Ant additional scale, thereby attracting more suppliers and customers. Twiner McCarron says given current political and economic uncertainties, strong partnerships between Canadian media companies are extremely important. “We love our U.S. partners, and we cherish those relationships, and we'll continue to nurture them,” she says. “But stronger together all the way, and Canada hasn't had a big media success story in a long time, and I believe this will be it.” Going public In August, Blue Ant, now in its 15th year, went public through a reverse takeover of Boat Rocker Studios. The move had several motivating factors, including significant financial support pledged by Fairfax Financial, a shareholder in Blue Ant since day one. It also allowed Blue Ant to go public without going through the initial public offering (IPO) process, which is a lengthy and complex process a private company must go through in order to sell its shares publicly for the first time. Since Boat Rocker was already a public company, the reverse takeover allowed Blue Ant to bypass the IPO process. The takeover also got liquidity for existing shareholders at Blue Ant, allowing them to choose if they wanted to buy more shares or sell the shares they already owned. However, the bigger motivating factor for MacMillan was the idea that by gaining a public float and a significantly enhanced balance sheet, Blue Ant could start to take advantage of some of the disruption in the industry. “We perceived lots of opportunities for M&A in the industry that we could only probably do if we were public,” he says. MacMillan says he’s “optimistic” about Blue Ant’s future, and the opportunities going public presents. Since the reverse takeover, not only has Blue Ant struck a deal to acquire Thunderbird, but it also acquired MagellanTV LLC in October for US$12 million. “Those are two good examples of what kind of things that we saw out there,” MacMillan says. “So we want to be public in order to seize those kind of opportunities.” Going nowhere alone MacMillan says he has always been an active guy, and he has dipped his toes in many different waters. “I’ve always liked to try to imagine unlikely things,” he says. In 2007, MacMillan co-founded the Samara Centre for Democracy, a non-partisan charity dedicated to reconnecting people with politics. MacMillan founded the centre out of a profound fear that democracy is always at risk. “If you're in shape, you still go to the gymnasium, you still work out,” he says. “And the body politic is just like the human body, it needs constant effort and attention and repair.” In 1998, he co-founded Closson Chase Vineyards and Winery, with Seaton McLean, the same friend who helped create Atlantis Films. “As for making wine, why not?,” he says. “Nothing like a good glass of pinot noir.” MacMillan is also a member of the Order of Canada, a senior fellow at Massey College, and the co-author of Tragedy in the Commons. In 2022 and 2023, he was named one of the top 500 leaders in the global entertainment industry by Variety Magazine. While he has gone far in life, he never went anywhere alone. MacMillan says behind every achievement is a team of partners and supporters. “I've done absolutely nothing in my life by myself, nothing,” he says. “And having partners, having teammates, it makes all the difference in the world.” mcollins@thewirereport.ca

Blue Ant’s Michael MacMillan ‘optimistic’ about future, sets sights on M&A opportunities

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By Maria Collins
|January 6, 2026

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