The Ladd Company

This article is about a US film company founded in the 20th century, for the 19th century Hawaiian Ladd & Company see Ladd & Co.

The Ladd Company was an American film production and distribution company that was active between 1979 and 2007.

history

In 1979, Alan Ladd Jr. founded the Ladd Company after serving as President of Twentieth Century Fox for many years . There he approved, among other things, the first Star Wars film. Under Warner Bros. , the company quickly gained great fame through films such as Nightshift , the first two Police Academy parts and The Stuff the Heroes are made of , but above all through Ridley Scott's science fiction film Blade Runner .

After the failures The Stuff The Heroes Are Made of and the animated film Twice Upon a Time (co-produced with Lucasfilm ), however, the company plunged into financial crisis for almost a decade. Twice Upon a Time received only a limited release in the US market. The film failed anyway and in 1984 the Ladd Company went bankrupt. In 1985 the company's last film was released for the time being. That same year, Alan Ladd Jr. took over MGM / United Artists .

It was only through the collaboration with Paramount Pictures on the Oscar-winning Braveheart that the difficulties could be overcome. In addition, two feature films were made based on US television series from the 1970s: The Brady Family and the sequel The Brady Family 2 . In 1996, the Ladd Company and Village Roadshow produced their first superhero film: The Phantom .

The last works were Lasse Hallström's drama An untamed life (2005) and Gone Baby Gone - No Child's Game from 2007. After that, the company ceased operations.

In 2011, Alan Ladd Jr. ended a lawsuit against Warner Bros. , which Ladd had started on accusing the film studio of "straight-lining" movie profits.

Web links

• List of Ladd-produced films in the IMDb

Individual evidence

1. ^ Anthony Slide: The New Historical Dictionary of the American Film Industry , London (Routledge) 2014, p. 113.
2. ^ Matthew Belloni: Warner Bros. Settles Alan Ladd, Jr. Profits Lawsuit (Exclusive) , hollywoodreporter.com April 20, 2011.
3. ↑ Mark Clark: Star Wars FAQ: Everything Left to Know About the Trilogy That Changed the Movies , Winona, Minnesota (Hal Leonard Corporation) 2015, p. 385.
4. ↑ Mike Watt: Fervid Filmmaking: 66 Cult Pictures of Vision, Verve and No Self-Restraint , Jefferson, North Carolina (McFarland & Company) 2013, p. 228.
5. ^ David A. Cook: Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, 1970–1979 , Oakland, California (UC Press) 2002, p. 311.
6. ^ Matthew Belloni: Warner Bros. Settles Alan Ladd, Jr. Profits Lawsuit (Exclusive) , hollywoodreporter.com April 20, 2011.