United Artists
From Double-Oh-Wiki
The United Artists Corporation (aka United Artists Associated, United Artists Pictures, and United Artists Films) is 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.
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[edit] The 1950s and 1960s
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 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.
[edit] The Last Act?
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.
[edit] Memorable releases
[edit] 1960s
- Dr. No (1962)
- From Russia with Love (1963)
- Goldfinger (1964)
[edit] 1970s
- Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
- Live and Let Die (1973)
- The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
- Moonraker (1979)
[edit] 1980s
- For Your Eyes Only (1981)
- Octopussy (1983)
- A View To A Kill (1985)
- The Living Daylights (1987)
- Licence To Kill (1989)
[edit] 1990s
- GoldenEye (1995)
[edit] Notes on Sources
- Bach, Steven. Final Cut. New York: Morrow, 1985.
- Balio, Tino. United Artists: The Company Built by the Stars. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976.
- Balio, Tino. United Artists: The Company That Changed the Film Industry. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.
- Berg, A. Scott. Goldwyn. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.
- Gabler, Neal. An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. New York: Crown Publishers, 1988.
- Schickel, Richard. D.W. Griffith: An American Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983.
- Thomson,David. Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick. New York: Alfred A, Knopf, 1992.
