From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| This article
does not have any
sources
.
You can help Wikipedia by finding
good
sources, and adding them.
(
September 2021
)
|
Paramount Pictures
is an American film
production
and
distribution company
. It is the oldest
movie studio
in the United States. It has been in existence since 1912. Paramount is owned by media conglomerate
Paramount Global
. Paramount is one of the Big Five movie studios.
Paramount Pictures Inc. can trace its beginnings to the creation in May, 1912 of the Famous Players Film Company. Organized in 1914 by a
Utah
theater
owner, W. W. Hodkinson, Paramount Pictures was the first successful nationwide distributor. Until this time, movies were sold on a statewide or regional basis. This was inefficient and costly to producers.
In 1916,
Adolph Zukor
created a three-way
merger
of his Famous Players Film Company,
Jesse L. Lasky's
Lasky Feature Play Company, and Paramount. The new company was called Famous Players-Lasky and grew quickly. Lasky ran the production side. Hiram Abrams was in charge of distribution and Zukor handled the business side of the company.
In 1927, Famous Players-Lasky took on the name Paramount-Famous Lasky Corporation. Three years later, because of the importance of the Publix theater chain, it was later known as Paramount-Publix Corporation. The company went into
bankruptcy
in 1933. When the company emerged from bankruptcy, it was known as Paramount Pictures, Inc.
Paramount Pictures had been an early supporter of
television
. It created stations in 1939 in
Los Angeles
(later to become
KTLA
) and
Chicago
's WBKB.
Paramount's successful run of lightweight pictures in the 1980s and 1990s created hits like
Flashdance
, the
Friday the 13th
series;
Raiders of the Lost Ark
,
Beverly Hills Cop
and the
Star Trek
features.
In 1993, entertainment
conglomerate
Viacom
bought Paramount.
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 completed.
In March 2010, Paramount started Insurge Pictures, a low-budget label. In 2019, Paramount bought 49 percent of
Miramax Films
.
|
---|
|
Division
| | |
---|
Subsidiaries
| |
---|
Defunct or sold
| |
---|
Related pages
| |
---|
TV, movies and properties
| |
---|
Created with the
Hasbro
name
| |
---|
Related pages
| | eOne Movie productions based on Hasbro Properties
|
---|
|
|
|
---|
|
|
---|
|
---|
Majors
|
|
---|
Mini-majors
|
|
---|
Horizontal
production/
distribution
companies
| |
---|
Slate
partners
| |
---|
Production/
distribution
companies
| |
---|
|