StudioCanal

StudioCanal

Type	division
Founded	1988 (as CANAL+ Production)
Headquarters	Paris, France
Industry	Filmmaking distribution
Parent	Vivendi SA
Website	Official web site

StudioCanal Image S.A. (aka Le Studio Canal+, Canal Plus, Canal + Distribution, Canal + Production, and Canal+ Image), is a French-based production and distribution company that owns the third-largest film library in the world. The company is part of the Canal+ Group, owned by Vivendi SA.

The company was founded in 1988 by Pierre Lescure as a spin-off of the Canal+ pay-TV network. The original function was to focus on French and European productions, but later made strategic deals with American production companies. StudioCanal's most notable productions from its early years include JFK, Basic Instinct, Cliffhanger, Under Siege, Free Willy, and the original Stargate movie.

Other films the company financed include U-571, Bully, and Bridget Jones's Diary. StudioCanal also funded the last third of David Lynch's film Mulholland Drive.^[1] StudioCanal also financed French-language films, such as Brotherhood of the Wolf (which became the second-highest-grossing French-language film in the United States in the last two decades) and Intimate Strangers (which is being remade by Hollywood-based Paramount Pictures^[2]).

Film library

StudioCanal acquired film libraries from studios that either went defunct or had merged with StudioCanal over the years. As a result, the company's library is the third-largest in the world.

StudioCanal's library includes the film libraries of Carolco Pictures (Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Rambo: First Blood Part II, Basic Instinct, etc.), DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group (King Kong Lives, Tai-Pan, international rights to Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, etc.), Embassy Pictures (The Graduate, The Producers, etc.), the Alexander Salkind pictures not owned by Warner Bros. (including Santa Claus: The Movie), the EMI Films library (Highlander, Death on the Nile, etc., but not including US rights to certain co-productions—US rights to such films as Close Encounters of the Third Kind [whose worldwide rights are with Sony Pictures] and The Deer Hunter are owned by other major studios, usually the original releasing studio) and the Lumiere Pictures and Television output (including The Third Man and The Avengers).

Distribution

StudioCanal acquired UK-based distributor Optimum Releasing in 2006.^[3]. In Germany, its films are released through Kinowelt.

Outside France, the United Kingdom, and Germany, StudioCanal does not have a formal distribution unit per se, relying on other studios and video companies to handle their product, in the US for example, studios such as Anchor Bay Entertainment, Lions Gate Entertainment, Image Entertainment ,Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Universal Pictures,distribute StudioCanal's back catalogue on Video and DVD.

References

1. ^ [1]
2. ^ [2]
3. ^ Variety

External links

• Official StudioCanal site