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Hanna-Barbera is an American animation studio founded in 1957 by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. The company was considered by many to be one of the pioneers of television animation during the second half of the 20th century, introducing concepts such as primetime animation like The Flintstones and was one of the first studios to utilize animation for Saturday morning cartoons in the 1960s.
In the 1980s, the staff of Hanna-Barbera worked together with Tsuburaya Productions under the direction of Noboru Tsuburaya to produce an animated film, Ultraman: The Adventure Begins which would serve as a potential backdoor pilot to a series. While the series was never made, this marked the second time a Japanese tokusatsu company would work together with HB on a project (The first being Toho with its 1978 Godzilla cartoon).
In the 1990s and 2000s, the company went through hard times, such as going through several ownership changes and the rise of cable television and the internet's 24-hour entertainment replacing Saturday morning cartoons. It was then dissolved into Warner Brothers after the death of William Hanna in 2001. Today, the brand lives on only as a marketing label by Warner Brothers to use for Hanna-Barbera properties such as Scooby Doo.