Institution research - Columbia Pictures

Columbia pictures is a film production company that produces and distributes film across the world, they were founded in 1919 and has gone through many ownerships including being purchased by Coca Cola and more recently Sony. During the golden age of film it was part of the little three this meant that they were a recognised film studio but on a small scale, over the years they have been based in California, there films have tended to be of a wide variety of genre for e.g. comedy. They are now currently part of Tri-star pictures, which is an agreement with HBO, and CBS to produce and distribute film and TV shows. Columbia’s logo is made up of a woman covered in the American flag holding a lamps/light which is called the statue of liberty, usually when it is showed during a film the camera the camera zooms out to reveal the torch and the woman, over the years this logo has gone under many revisions.

The studio was formed in 1919 under a different name, Cohn-Brandt-Cohn Film Sales, and was owned by Jack and Harry Cohn and Joe Brandt but it wasn’t until 1922 where they released their first film and soon after that they changed to Columbia Pictures and soon after that they started to become more popular by the 1920s, and with that popularity more lucrative directors wanted to produce films for them one of which is Frank Capra, with his help they were able to lure more well known actors and directors, but with more success meant more money was being spent and soon Columbia couldn’t pay for everything so effectively they had use what there budget could take despite the directors that were signed to them asking for bigger budgets, but there fortunes soon changed as they were getting more annual profit, they were bought out by coca cola in 1982, coca cola decided to buy them instead of investing in Disney and the partnership meant good things for Columbia where they produced films such as Ghostbusters and the Karate Kid, Columbia also branched out into Television, and produced TV shows such as The Jefferson’s, with the increasing cost of film productions Coca Cola brought in some partners in the form of HBO and CBS to form Tri-Star Pictures eventually those 2 partners dropped out and then was renamed Columbia Pictures Entertainment, this soon led to Sony buying them and saw Coca Cola get a feasible profit form the transaction, Sony then expanded by opening Sony Pictures Studios, Soon after it was re-branded again under Sony Pictures Entertainment, they went on to produce stellar films like Spider-man and Men in Black.

Since the take-over of Sony they have produced many of films that have done very well at the box office selling millions and appealing to the mass audience, they have been able to produce as well as acquire lucrative franchises and create new and successful franchises and gaining revenue of over $1.3 Billion and cementing there place as the most successful film producing and distribution company of that year, also Sony bought MGM one of Columbia’s rivals in film production and this gave them access to a larger library of film franchises that was previously held by MGM such as James Bond.