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In 2014, Paramount Pictures became the first major Hollywood studio to distribute all of its films in digital form only. [3] The company's headquarters and studios are located at 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, California. [4] Paramount Pictures is a member of the Motion Picture Association (MPA).
May 23, 2024 · Paramount Pictures, one of the first and most successful of the Hollywood film studios. It became a subsidiary of Viacom in 1994 and Paramount Global in 2022.. Paramount Pictures Corp. was established in 1914 by W.W. Hodkinson as a film distributor, offering Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players Film Company, the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, and other producers an outlet for their movies.
Paramount Pictures began humbly in 1912 when Adolph Zukor, the owner of a New York nickelodeon, released the first full-length drama shown in the United States (Queen Elizabeth, starring Sarah Bernhardt) and founded the Famous Players Film Company. A year later, Zukor began distributing his films through a start-up company called Paramount ...
Feb 29, 2024 · By around 1916, the Paramount Pictures we know had come into being with the establishment of a West Coast production plant to match its East Coast plant in Astoria, New York.
- Overview
- History
- Investments
- Filmography
Paramount Pictures (also known as Paramount Pictures Corporation) is a film and television production/distribution company founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Paramount Global. It is the third oldest existing film studio in the world behind Universal Studios & Gaumont Pictures, and the last major film studio still headquartere...
1912–1920: Early history
Paramount is the fifth oldest surviving film studio in the world behind Universal Studios, Nordisk Film, Pathé, and Gaumont Film Company. It is the last major film studio still headquartered in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles. Paramount Pictures dates its existence from the 1912 founding date of the Famous Players Film Company. However, Famous Players was actually only one of the companies that merged into Paramount Pictures (then known as the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation) in 1914. Founder Hungarian-born Adolph Zukor, who had been an early investor in nickelodeons, saw that movies appealed mainly to working-class immigrants. With partners Daniel Frohman and Charles Frohman he planned to offer feature-length films that would appeal to the middle class by featuring the leading theatrical players of the time (leading to the slogan "Famous Players in Famous Plays"). By mid-1913, Famous Players had completed five films, and Zukor was on his way to success. That same year, another aspiring producer, Jesse L. Lasky, opened his Lasky Feature show Company with money borrowed from his brother-in-law, Samuel Goldfish, later known as Samuel Goldwyn. The Lasky company hired as their first employee a stage director with virtually no film experience, Cecil B. DeMille, who would find a suitable location site in Hollywood, near Los Angeles, for his first feature film, The Squaw Man. Beginning in 1914, both Lasky and Famous Players released their films through a start-up company, Paramount Pictures Corporation, organized early that year by a Utah theatre owner, W. W. Hodkinson, who had bought and merged several smaller firms. Hodkinson and actor, director, producer Hobart Bosworth had started production of a series of Jack London movies. Paramount was the first successful nation-wide distributor; until this time, films were sold on a state-wide or regional basis which had proved costly to film producers. Also, Famous Players and Lasky were privately owned while Paramount was a corporation. In 1916, Zukor maneuvered a three-way merger of his Famous Players, the Lasky Company, and Paramount. Zukor and Lasky bought Hodkinson out of Paramount, and merged the three companies into one. The new company Lasky and Zukor founded, Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, grew quickly, with Lasky and his partners Goldwyn and DeMille running the production side, Hiram Abrams in charge of distribution, and Zukor making great plans. With only the exhibitor-owned First National as a rival, Famous Players-Lasky and its "Paramount Pictures" soon dominated the business.
1921–1930: The rise
Because Zukor believed in stars, he signed and developed many of the leading early stars, including Mary Pickford, Marguerite Clark, Pauline Frederick, Douglas Fairbanks, Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino, and Wallace Reid. With so many important players, Paramount was able to introduce "block booking", which meant that an exhibitor who wanted a particular star's films had to buy a year's worth of other Paramount productions. It was this system that gave Paramount a leading position in the 1920s and 1930s, but which led the government to pursue it on antitrust grounds for more than twenty years. The driving force behind Paramount's rise was Zukor. All through the teens and twenties, he built the Publix Theatres Corporation, a mighty chain of nearly 2,000 screens, ran two production studios (in Astoria, New York, and Hollywood, California), and became an early investor in radio, taking a 50% interest in the new Columbia Broadcasting System in 1928 (selling it within a few years; this would not be the last time Paramount and CBS crossed paths, as time proved). By acquiring the successful Balaban & Katz chain in 1926, he gained the services of Barney Balaban (who would eventually become Paramount's president in 1936), his brother A. J. Balaban (who would eventually supervise all stage production nationwide and produce talkie shorts), and their partner Sam Katz (who would run the Paramount-Publix theatre chain in New York City from the thirty-five story Paramount Theatre Building on Times Square). Zukor also hired independent producer B. P. Schulberg, an unerring eye for new talent, to run the new West Coast operations. They would then purchase what was originally built as the Robert Brunton Studios. This 26 acre facility, at 5451 Marathon Street, cost US$1 million. In 1927, Famous Players-Lasky took on the name Paramount-Famous Lasky Corporation. Three years later, because of the importance of the Publix Theatres, it became Paramount-Publix Theatres Corporation. Also in 1928, Paramount began releasing Inkwell Imps animated cartoons produced by Max and Dave Fleischer's Fleischer Studios in New York City. The Fleischers, veterans in the animation industry, would prove to be among the few animation producers capable of challenging the prominence of Walt Disney. The Paramount newsreel series Paramount News ran from 1927 to 1957. In 1929 Paramount Released their first musical "Innocents of Paris" Richard A. Whiting and Leo Robin composed the score for the film, Maurice Chevalier starred and sung the most famous song from the film "Louise".
1931–1940: Receivership
Eventually, Zukor shed most of his early partners; the Frohman brothers, Hodkinson and Goldwyn were out by 1917 while Lasky hung on until 1932, when, blamed for the near-collapse of Paramount in the Depression years, he too was tossed out. Zukor's over-expansion and use of overvalued Paramount stock for purchases led the company into receivership in 1933. A bank-mandated reorganization team, led by John Hertz and Otto Kahn kept the company intact, and, miraculously, Zukor was kept on. In 1935, Paramount-Publix went bankrupt. In 1936, Barney Balaban became president, and Zukor was bumped up to chairman of the board. In this role, Zukor reorganized the company as Paramount Pictures, Inc. and was able to successfully bring the studio out of bankruptcy. As always, Paramount films continued to emphasize stars; in the 1920s there were Swanson, Valentino, and Clara Bow. By the 1930s, talkies brought in a range of powerful new draws: Miriam Hopkins, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West, W.C. Fields, Jeanette MacDonald, Claudette Colbert, the Marx Brothers (whose first two films were shot at Paramount's Astoria, New York, studio), Dorothy Lamour, Carole Lombard, Bing Crosby, band leader Shep Fields, famous Argentine tango singer Carlos Gardel, and Gary Cooper among them. In this period Paramount can truly be described as a movie factory, turning out sixty to seventy pictures a year. Such were the benefits of having a huge theater chain to fill, and of block booking to persuade other chains to go along. In 1933, Mae West would also add greatly to Paramount's success with her suggestive movies She Done Him Wrong and I'm No Angel. However, the sex appeal West gave in these movies would also lead to the enforcement of the Production Code, as the newly formed organization the Catholic Legion of Decency threatened a boycott if it was not enforced. Paramount cartoons produced by Fleischer Studios continued to be successful, with characters such as Betty Boop and Popeye the Sailor becoming widely successful. One Fleischer series, Screen Songs, featured live-action music stars under contract to Paramount hosting sing-alongs of popular songs. However, a huge blow to Fleischer Studios occurred in 1934, after the Production Code was enforced and Betty Boop's popularity declined as she was forced to have a more tame personality and wear a longer skirt. The animation studio would rebound with Popeye, and in 1935, polls showed that Popeye was even more popular than Mickey Mouse. After an unsuccessful expansion into feature films, as well as the fact that Max and Dave Fleischer were no longer speaking to one another, Fleischer Studios was acquired by Paramount, which renamed the operation Famous Studios. That incarnation of the animation studio continued cartoon production until 1967, but has been historically dismissed as having largely failed to maintain the artistic acclaim the Fleischer brothers achieved under their management.
DreamWorks
In 2006, Paramount became the parent of DreamWorks SKG. Soros Strategic Partners and Dune Entertainment II soon afterwards acquired controlling interest in the live-action films released through September 16, 2005, the latest film in this package was Just Like Heaven. The remaining live-action films through March 2006 remained under direct Paramount control. However, Paramount does own distribution (and other ancillary) rights to the Soros/Dune films. Even as DreamWorks switches distribution of live-action films that are not part of existing franchises to Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Paramount will continue to own the films released before the merger, and the films that Paramount themselves distributed (including sequel rights; such films as Little Fockers will be distributed by Paramount and DreamWorks, since it is a sequel to an existing DreamWorks film – in this case, Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers, though Paramount will only own international rights to this title, whereas Universal Studios will handle domestic distribution). As for the DreamWorks Animation library, Paramount owns distribution rights to the pre-2013 library, and their previous distribution deal to future DWA titles expired at the end of 2012 with the last Paramount-distributed feature, Rise of the Guardians. 20th Century Fox now handles distribution on future titles beginning with The Croods.
The CBS library
Independent company Hollywood Classics now represents Paramount in the theatrical distribution of all the films produced by the various motion picture divisions of CBS over the years, as a result of the Viacom/CBS merger. Paramount (via CBS Home Entertainment) has outright video distribution to the aforementioned CBS library with few exceptions-for example, the original Twilight Zone DVDs are handled by Image Entertainment. Until 2009, the video rights to My Fair Lady were with original theatrical distributor Warner Bros., under license from CBS (the video license to that film has now reverted to CBS Home Entertainment under Paramount). The CBS-produced/owned films, unlike other films in Paramount's library, are still distributed by CBS Television Distribution on TV, and not by Trifecta Entertainment & Media, because CBS (or a subdivision) is the copyright holder for these films.
•List of Paramount Pictures films
•Rugrats in Paris: The Movie/Credits
•Hey Arnold!: The Movie/Credits
•The Wild Thornberrys Movie/Credits
Paramount is the last major movie studio located in Hollywood. Other studios such as Warner Bros. and Columbia Pictures moved to other neighborhoods in Los Angeles. On December 11, 2005, Paramount said it had purchased DreamWorks SKG in a deal worth $1.6 billion. On February 1, 2006, the studio announced that the DreamWorks acquisition was ...
A legendary producer and global distributor of filmed entertainment since 1912, Paramount Pictures' library consists of more than 1,200 film titles with rights to an additional 2,800, featuring films by Hollywood's most respected filmmakers. Paramount Pictures distributes its titles on DVD and Blu-ray through Paramount Home Entertainment. At ...
