Trans World Entertainment was an American independent production and distribution company which produced low-to-medium budget films mostly targeted for home-video market. In the early 1990s, the company became embroiled in the Credit Lyonnais banking scandal in Hollywood and was foreclosed on by the bank and subsequently incorporated into the Epic Library. Since 1998, its library has been owned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

The company was founded as a video distribution company in 1983 by Moshe Diamant and Eduard Sarlui, a filmmaker whose company Continental Motion Pictures, founded with his sister Helen, had previously produced a number of films including Ator, the Fighting Eagle and Warrior of the Lost World.

In 1984, it bought out the video distribution rights to shows handled by various syndicators, including Viacom Enterprises and Ziv International for a 200-title agreement. Also that year, it expanded into the world of theatrical film distribution and production, with a lineup of fully-funded films (three films per year), some of which were exhibited at the Cannes Film Festival; the theatrical film division was headed up by William Dunn.

Diamant met with filmmaker William Malone in 1985 and Malone pitched him a science-fiction horror film in the vein of Alien. The resulting film was Creature. Trans World Entertainment also produced Pray for Death starring Sho Kosugi the same year. Both films were maligned by critics, but were successful in the home video marketplace.

Also in 1985, Trans World Entertainment agreed to merge with Cardinal Entertainment to form a new outfit, Cardinal/TWE; Cardinal Entertainment would be the distributor of Trans World Entertainment's theatrical feature film projects. TWE additionally entered into an agreement with Sarlui's Continental Motion Pictures; Continental would handle worldwide distribution on the titles TWE produced (aiming for six to ten pictures per year), and Continental gained access to the TWE library.

In 1986, Media Home Entertainment inked a deal with TWE for Media to distribute TWE's theatrical titles on videocassette. That year, Eduard Sarlui joined the company as CEO and chairman, while Paul Mason was installed as President of Production; TWE's output increased considerably. This was primarily due to them acquiring the rights to Italian genre titles from filmmakers such as Joe D'Amato; TWE would retitle and dub them and release them straight to video. On September 10, 1986, Trans World Entertainment announced that David Keith had signed on to direct two projects greenlit by TWE.

The company employed a pre-sales model for their product and through the mid-to-late 1980s continued to produce modest direct to video hits such as Moon in Scorpio starring Britt Ekland and Interzone. They also continued to distribute films such as Killer Klowns from Outer Space. In 1987, they signed a multi-picture deal with Italian producer Ovidio G. Assonitis. The first of the films to be produced was The Farm, released as The Curse, a science-fiction horror film starring Wil Wheaton and Claude Akins, based on H. P. Lovecraft's short story The Colour Out of Space. The film earned $1,169,922 from its opening weekend, and finished with a gross of $1,930,001 at the box office. The film also sold considerably well on home video.

In 1986, Diamant and Sarlui created a sister company entitled Epic Productions; Sarlui would remain chairman and CEO of Trans World Entertainment and Diamant would become CEO and Chairman of Epic. A line of credit of $60 million was arranged with French bank Credit Lyonnais Bank Nederland for Epic to produce films that would be distributed under an exclusive marketing agreement with RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video. Assonitis' next two films for Trans World Entertainment, The Bite and Amok Train, were retitled as Curse II: The Bite and Beyond the Door III respectively by RCA/Columbia Pictures to capitalize on the success of The Curse and Assonitis' 1974 mega-hit Beyond the Door, despite no connections between the films.