Build-A-Bear’s planned KABU cartoon has already made it to YouTube — but the lawsuit over who was supposed to deliver it is now off the books. Build-A-Bear Entertainment has dismissed its case against the Los Angeles-area producers it accused of blowing past deadlines and mishandling a roughly $3 million production budget.
The St. Louis-based brand’s entertainment arm filed the lawsuit in St. Louis County on June 3, naming Kabu Productions, Foundation Media Partners and producer Patrick Hughes, according to STLtoday. The company alleged the defendants failed to deliver the animated series on schedule despite multiple extensions.
Under a June 2023 production agreement, Build-A-Bear said the producers were supposed to deliver 10 episodes, each at least 11 minutes long, by April 1, 2024. The St. Louis Business Journal reported that the agreement carried an approved production budget of about $2.97 million, along with a $200,000 producer fee and a potential five percent share of adjusted gross profits.
Build-A-Bear also alleged that the producers later committed to delivering 13 episodes by mid-2025, but failed to meet revised deadlines and withheld production agreements involving outside partners. The lawsuit further claimed that an animation company tied to the project suffered creditor seizures and bankruptcy proceedings, allegations that have not been tested in court.
The fight briefly moved from county court to federal court after the California defendants filed a notice of removal on July 9. Legal Newsline reported that the defendants argued the parties were citizens of different states and that the amount in controversy exceeded the federal threshold; the federal docket identifies the case as a breach-of-contract action in the Eastern District of Missouri.
KABU Eventually Reached YouTube
There is an important wrinkle in the dispute: KABU was not left as a purely theoretical project. Build-A-Bear announced in December 2025 that the first of 13 full episodes would debut on its YouTube channel on December 26, with new episodes scheduled to follow each Friday.
Foundation Media Partners’ own website describes KABU as a series produced in partnership with Build-A-Bear and says the companies worked together on entertainment projects from 2017 through 2025. That account underscores the tangled history behind the case, even as the two sides now appear to be moving forward without the latest lawsuit.
Dismissal Leaves The Business Dispute Unanswered
The dismissal ends the current action, but the public reporting does not identify whether the parties reached a settlement, renegotiated their arrangement or simply decided to stop pursuing the case. As STLtoday’s report makes clear, the dismissal itself is not a court ruling on whether the production deadlines were breached or whether any money was mishandled.
For now, KABU’s episodes are the part of the partnership that made it to the public, while the contract fight has disappeared from the courtroom — at least in its current form.
