Screen Gems is an American subsidiary company of Sony Pictures Entertainment's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group that has served several different purposes for its parent companies over the decades since its incorporation.
Animation studio: 1940–1946
For an entire decade, Charles B. Mintz distributed his Krazy Kat, Scrappy, and Color Rhapsody animated film shorts through Columbia Pictures. When Mintz became indebted to Columbia in 1939, he ended up selling his studio to them. Under new management, the studio assumed a new name, Screen Gems. Jimmy Bronis, Mintz's production manager became the studio head, but was shortly replaced by Mintz's brother-in-law, George Winkler. After this, Columbia decided to "clean house" by ousting the bulk of the staff (including Winkler) and hiring creative cartoonist, Frank Tashlin. After Tashlin's short stay came Dave Fleischer and after several of his successors came Ray Katz and Henry Binder from Warner Bros. Animators, directors, and writers at the series included people such as Art Davis, Sid Marcus, Bob Wickersham, and, during its latter period, Bob Clampett.
The studio had several characters on their roster. These included Flippy, Willoughby Wren, and Tito and his Burrito. However, the most successful characters the studio had were The Fox and the Crow, a comic duo of a refined Fox and a street-wise Crow.
Screen Gems is also notable for being, in an attempt to keep costs low, the last American animation studio to stop producing black and white cartoons. The final black-and-white Screen Gems shorts appeared in 1946, over three years after the second-longest holdouts (Famous Studios and Leon Schlesinger Productions). During that same year, the studio shut its doors for good, though their animation output continued to be distributed until 1949.
The Screen Gems cartoons were only moderately successful when compared to those of Disney, Warner Bros., and MGM. The studio's purpose was assumed by an outside producer, United Productions of America (UPA), whose cartoons, including Gerald McBoing Boing and the Mr. Magoo series, were major critical and commercial successes.
Television subsidiary: 1948–1974
In 1948, Screen Gems was revived to serve as the television subsidiary of Columbia, producing and syndicating several popular shows (see below) and also syndicating Columbia Pictures' theatrical film library to television, including the wildly successful series of two-reel short subjects starring The Three Stooges in the late 1950s. Earlier, they also acquired syndication rights to a package of Universal horror films, which was enormously successful in reviving that genre.
From 1958 through 1974, under Vice President of Production Harry Ackerman, Screen Gems delivered the classic sitcoms: Father Knows Best, Dennis the Menace, The Donna Reed Show, Hazel, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Gidget, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, The Flying Nun, The Monkees, and The Partridge Family. It was also the original distributor for Hanna-Barbera Productions, an animation studio founded by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera after leaving Columbia's now-semi-sister studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
In the late 1950s Screen Gems would also go into broadcasting. Stations that would be owned by Screen Gems over the years would include KCPX (Salt Lake City), WVUE (New Orleans), WAPA (San Juan), WNJU (Linden, NJ), and several radio stations as well, including 50,000-watt clear channel WWVA (Wheeling WV).
From 1964 to 1969, former child star Jackie Cooper was Vice President of Program Development. He was responsible for packaging series (such as Bewitched) and other projects and selling them to the networks. John H. Mitchell[1] was president from 1969-1977.
In 1974, Screen Gems was renamed Columbia Pictures Television. The final notable production from this incarnation of Screen Gems before the name change was the 1974 mini-series QB VII.Columbia was the last major studio to enter television by name.
Changes in corporate ownership of Columbia came in 1982, when The Coca-Cola Company bought the company, although continuing to trade under the CPT name. In the mid-1980s, Coca-Cola reorganized its television holdings to create Coca-Cola Television, merging CPT with the television unit of Embassy Communications as Columbia/Embassy Television, although both companies continued to use separate identities until 1988, when it and TriStar Television were reunited under the CPT name.
In 1989 Columbia Pictures was purchased by Sony Corporation of Japan. In 1991, Columbia Pictures Entertainment was renamed to Sony Pictures Entertainment as a film production-distribution subsidiary, and subsequently combined CPT with a revived TriStar Television in 1994 to form Columbia TriStar Television.
The television division today is presently known as Sony Pictures Television.
Selected TV shows
Television programs produced and/or syndicated by Screen Gems (most shows produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions are now owned and distributed by Warner Bros. Television, except for Jeannie and Partridge Family 2200 A.D. (see below):
Specialty feature film studio, 1999–present
In September 2002, Columbia TriStar Television became Sony Pictures Television, while three years earlier, in 1999, Screen Gems was resurrected as a fourth specialty film producing arm of Sony's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, after Sony Pictures Classics, Triumph Films and Destination Films. Similar to Dimension Films, Screen Gems produces and releases smaller-budget science fiction, horror, teen movies, farce, ethnic, and African-American films with more centralized target audiences than Columbia TriStar's mainstream outputs, although it started out as a sister studio of Sony Pictures Classics, which produced more mature, intellectual fare.
The most-successful Screen Gems film commercially as of 2007 was Resident Evil: Extinction, which grossed $147,713,442 in international box office receipts.
Screen Gems films
- Arlington Road - 1999
- Limbo - 1999
- Girlfight - 2000
- Dangerous Assualt - 2000
- True Secrets - 2000
- Snatch - 2000
- The Brothers - 2001
- Ascension - 2001
- The Forsaken - 2001
- Ghosts of Mars - 2001
- Running Heat - 2001
- Two Can Play That Game - 2001
- The 51st State - 2002
- Love and A Bullet - 2002
- The Mothman Prophecies - 2002
- The Massacre - 2002
- Big Deal - 2002
- Resident Evil - 2002
- Swept Away - 2002
- In the Cut - 2003
- The Medallion - 2003
- Underworld - 2003
- Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid - 2004 (distributed by Columbia Pictures).
- Breakin' All the Rules - 2004
- Resident Evil: Apocalypse - 2004
- Breach of Contact - 2004
- Into the Sun - 2004
- You Got Served - 2004
- Boogeyman - 2005
- Balance - 2005 (co-production with United Artists)
- The Cave - 2005
- The Exorcism of Emily Rose - 2005
- The Gospel - 2005
- Hostel - 2006 (distributed by Lions Gate.)
- Justifed My Love - 2006 (co-production with United Artists)
- Underworld: Evolution - 2006
- Nightwatch - 2006
- When a Stranger Calls - 2006
- Ultraviolet - 2006
- I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer - 2006
- The Grudge 2 - 2006 -
- Zombies - 2006
- The Covenant - 2006
- Dead Weekend - 2006 (co-production with Destination Films and Front Street Production)
- The Messengers - 2007 (distributed by Columbia Pictures).
- Resident Evil: Extinction - 2007
- Reunion - 2007
- Stomp the Yard - 2007
- The Brothers Solomon - 2007 (distributed by TriStar Pictures and Revolution Studios)
- Vacancy - 2007
- Marassa 2: Bloodlust - 2007
- Hostel Part 2 - 2007 - distributed by Lions Gate - Such titles: Hostel Part Two or Hostel Part Two: The Sequel)
- Hidden Secret - 2007
- This Christmas - 2007
- Blonde Ambition - 2007
- Already Dead - 2007
- First Sunday - January 11, 2008
- Love Lies Bleeding - January 15, 2008
- Faithful Ambition - January 18, 2008
- Untraceable - January 25, 2008
- Black Valentine - February 8, 2008
- Saving Anna - March 4, 2008
- Outpost - March 11, 2008 (co-production with Newmarket Films)
- Prom Night - April 11, 2008 (co-production with Alliance Films)
- The Bricks - April 18, 2008 (distributed by TriStar Pictures and Miramax Films)
- Concious - April 25, 2008
- Cleaner - May 25, 2008
- Wieners - June 3, 2008
- Attention - June 6, 2008
- Lakeview Terrace - September 19, 2008
- Quarantine - October 17, 2008
- Bad Influence - October 17, 2008
- Safe House - November 14, 2008
- Extraction Point - December 25, 2008
- Boogeyman 2 - 2008
- Gabriel - 2008 (independent Australian film, distributed by Screen Gems)
- Resident Evil: Degeneration - 2008 (Distribution only, co-distributed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)
- The Resurrection - 2008
- The Cottage - 2008
- Private Valentine: Blonde & Dangerous - 2008
- Vacancy 2: The First Cut - 2009 (distributed by Stage 6 Films)
- Boogeyman 3 - 2009
- Underworld: Rise of the Lycans - January 23, 2009
- Chillers - January 30, 2009
- Fired Up - February 20, 2009
- Last Wednesday - April 17, 2009 (co-production with Columbia Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)
- Obsessed - April 24, 2009
- Framed - May 15, 2009
- Black Valentine 2: The Massacre - June 23, 2009 (distributed by Stage 6 Films)
- Secure Location - June 26, 2009
- Hugless: Evolution - July 17, 2009 (co-production with Miramax Films)
- No Big Deal - July 24, 2009
- Selfless - July 31, 2009
- Double Harmony - September 25, 2009
- The Stepfather - October 16, 2009
- Operatives - October 16, 2009
- Daywatcher - October 23, 2009
Future releases
- Knights - November 13, 2009
- Blowback - November 20, 2009
- Armored - December 4, 2009
- Judgment - December 11, 2009
- Takers - January 8, 2010
- Love for Enemies - January 15, 2010
- Legion - January 22, 2010
- Daylight - January 29, 2010
- Dear John - February 5, 2010
- Nightfall - February 5, 2010
- My First Date - February 12, 2010
- Mardi Gras - February 19, 2010
- The Hunger - February 26, 2010 (co-production with Rogue Pictures and Intrepid Pictures and Platinum Dunes)
- Newest Corpse - April 16, 2010
- Death at a Funeral - April 23, 2010
- Priest - August 13, 2010
- The Roommate - October 1, 2010
- Burlesque - November, 2010
- Provinces of Night
- The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
- Resident Evil: Afterlife (co-production with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)
- Easy A
- The Crossing
See also
External links
