United Artists Corporation (aka United Artists Associated, United Artists Pictures, and United Artists Films) was a movie studio and a subsidiary of MGM, itself part of the Sony Pictures/Comcast joint venture. It is currently "branded" as an art-house studio.
UA, an MGM division for a quarter century, also shares the copyright (with Danjaq L.L.C.) of the wildly successful James Bond film franchise.
History[]
It backed two expatriate Americans in Britain, who had acquired screen rights to Ian Fleming's Bond novels. For $1 million, UA backed Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli's Dr. No (which was a sensation in 1962) and served as the launching point for the James Bond series. That franchise has outlived UA's life as a major studio, still running forty years later and still co-owned by UA. Other successful projects backed in this period included Blake Edwards's Pink Panther series, which began in 1964, and Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns, which made a star of Clint Eastwood.
In 1990 came the farcical sale to the Italian promoter Giancarlo Parretti; having bought MGM/UA by wildly overstating his own financial condition, within a year Parretti had defaulted to his primary bank, Crédit Lyonnais, which foreclosed on the studio in 1992. In an effort to make MGM/UA saleable, Credit Lyonnais ramped up production, reviving the James Bond films. MGM was sold in 1997, again to Kirk Kekorian. During the 2000s, UA was repositioned as a boutique or specialty studio, while the Bond francise was move to MGM. UA (re-christened United Artists Films) released a few "art-house" films.
On April 8, 2005, a partnership of Comcast, Sony and several merchant banks bought United Artists and its parent, MGM, for a total of $4.8 billion.
On 2023, it was folded into MGM.
Bond films[]
1960s[]
- Dr. No (1962)
- From Russia with Love (1963)
- Goldfinger (1964)
- Thunderball (1965)
- You Only Live Twice (1967)
- On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
1970s[]
- Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
- Live and Let Die (1973)
- The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
- The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
- Moonraker (1979)
1980s[]
- For Your Eyes Only (1981)
- Octopussy (1983)
- A View to a Kill (1985)
- The Living Daylights (1987)
- Licence to Kill 1989)
1990s[]
- GoldenEye (1995)
- Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
- The World Is Not Enough (1999)
2020s[]
- No Time to Die (2021)