text: In 2018, Lionsgate's newly launched digital content unit, Studio L, announced its first slate. In October 2018, Agapy Kapouranis replaced Peter Iacono as president of international television and digital distribution.
  2018−2023: Acquisition targets
  In January 2018, it was reported that Lionsgate was being subject to a bidding war for a possible acquisition, with Amazon.com (which went on to acquire Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 2022), Comcast, Sony Pictures, Verizon Communications, CBS Corporation, and Viacom (with CBS and Viacom remerging into ViacomCBS in 2019; now known as Paramount Global as of 2022) having made offers.
  At the time, Lionsgate Vice Chairman Michael Burns stated in an interview with CNBC that Lionsgate was mostly interested in merging with CBS and Viacom. Viacom and Lionsgate were both interested in acquiring The Weinstein Company.
  On February 27, 2018, a month after the bidding war announcement, Variety reported in a detailed article that toy manufacturing company Hasbro (which had collaborated with the company in the 2017 film My Little Pony: The Movie via its Allspark Pictures theatrical film financing unit which is in turn owned by its Allspark division) came close to also acquiring Lionsgate, but the deal fell through. Hasbro would later go on to acquire Entertainment One (eOne; another Canadian-founded business) on December 30, 2019.
  On October 3, 2019, Malone completed the sale of his stake in the studio.