Castle Rock Entertainment

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Castle Rock Entertainment (formerly abbreviated as CR ) is a former American film production company founded in 1987 by five independent film producers. The former company is now organized as a division of Warner Bros. , a subsidiary of Time Warner .

history

Castle Rock is a fictional small town in Maine that is home to many of Stephen King's stories, including the short story The Corpse from the Spring, Summer, Fall and Death short story collection , which director Rob Reiner wrote in 1986 under the title Stand By Me - The Secret of a Summer filmed (see: Castle Rock Cycle ).

Due to the success of the feature film, Reiner and four other film producers founded the film production company Castle Rock Entertainment in 1987 , which Harry and Sally released as the first film in 1989.

In the early years, Castle Rock Entertainment worked closely with Nelson Entertainment and Columbia Pictures , the former owning shares in Castle Rock . Columbia took care of cinema sales in the USA, while Nelson took care of home entertainment sales.

Castle Rock filmed six King novels, including the 1990 Oscar- winning thriller Misery .

When Ted Turner's Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) acquired New Line Cinema in 1993 , it also indirectly acquired the New Line owned shares in Nelson. TBS sold the shares in Nelson and acquired Castle Rock Entertainment in early 1994. Castle Rock / Turner thus took over the home entertainment rights and set up sales offices in cooperation with local film distributors ( Rank-Castle Rock / Turner in Great Britain, Concorde-Castle Rock / Turner in Germany, Filmayer-Castle Rock / Turner in Spain).

TBS was merged with Time Warner at the end of 1996 and the companies concerned were restructured. Castle Rock's number of productions was severely restricted, and overseas distribution agreements were terminated in 1997 with Castle Rock's withdrawal.

The distribution agreement with Columbia Pictures was terminated in 1999 and Warner Bros. took over the US theatrical distribution, while Universal Pictures was entrusted with the international theatrical distribution, which was handled by United International Pictures (UIP).

In the course of the so-called AOL crisis at Time Warner, the entire group was restructured in 2003. It was Castle Rock Entertainment transformed from a semi-autonomous business unit of Time Warner in a division of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which still mainly as brand persists. The worldwide distribution rights for Castle Rock productions have been exclusively with Warner since then.

Film library

Due to the history of the company, the rights to the Castle Rock productions are divided between different companies.

The rights to productions until 1993 (some not published until 1994) remained with Nelson Entertainment. When the company went under, the film rights were transferred to PolyGram Filmed Entertainment (PFE). PolyGram was sold by Philips to Seagram in 1998 and PFE in 1999 . Seagram only took over the production and sales companies from PFE, but sold the PFE film library to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). With the takeover of MGM by a consortium led by Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) and Comcast , SPE de facto controls these titles, which legally still belong to MGM.

The rights to productions from 1994 onwards were retained by Castle Rock itself when it was taken over by Turner. These titles are now part of the Warner Bros. Entertainment film library.

Exceptions to this basic distribution are individual co-productions to which other companies exercise rights.

Current productions

The few new productions of Castle Rock include Before Sunset , a sequel to the 1995 production Before Sunrise and the computer-animated film The Polar Express , from which a IMAX - 3D variant was produced. In 2005 CR delivered a box-office flop with Miss Undercover 2 , the sequel to the 2000 production Miss Undercover .

Filmography (selection)

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