Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Orion Pictures
Orion Releasing, LLC (doing business as Orion Pictures) is an American film production and distribution company owned by the Amazon MGM Studios subsidiary of Amazon. In its current incarnation, Orion focuses primarily on producing, distributing, and acquiring independent and specialty films made by underrepresented filmmakers.
It was founded in 1978 as Orion Pictures Corporation, a joint venture between Warner Bros. and three former senior executives at United Artists (UA). The company produced and released films from 1978 through 1999 and was also involved in television production and syndication in the 1980s and early 1990s. It was one of the largest mini-major studios during its early years, when it worked with prominent directors such as Woody Allen, James Cameron, Jonathan Demme, and Oliver Stone. Four films distributed by Orion won Academy Awards for Best Picture: Amadeus (1984), Platoon (1986), Dances with Wolves (1990), and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
In 1997, Orion was acquired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), and was folded into MGM in 1999. MGM later revived the Orion name for television in 2013 and relaunched Orion Pictures a year later. In 2022, Amazon acquired Orion when it acquired MGM.
On February 6, 1978, three executives of Transamerica (TA)-owned studio United Artists (UA)—Arthur B. Krim (chairman), Eric Pleskow (president and chief executive officer), and Robert Benjamin (chairman of the finance committee)—quit their jobs. Krim and Benjamin had headed UA since 1951 and subsequently turned around the then-flailing studio with a number of critical and commercial successes. Change had begun once Transamerica purchased UA in 1967 and, within a decade, a rift formed between Krim and Transamerica chairman John R. Beckett concerning the studio's operations. Krim suggested spinning off UA into a separate company which was rejected by Beckett.
The last straw came for Pleskow when he refused to collect and deliver the medical records of UA department heads to Transamerica's offices in San Francisco for the sake of confidentiality. The tensions only worsened when Fortune magazine reported an article on the clash between UA and TA in which Beckett had stated that, if the executives disliked the parent company's treatment of them, they should resign. Krim, Benjamin and Pleskow quit UA on January 13, 1978, followed by the exits of senior vice presidents William Bernstein and Mike Medavoy three days later. The week following the resignations, according to the website Reference for Business, 63 important Hollywood figures took out an advertisement in a trade paper warning Transamerica that it had made a fatal mistake in letting the five men leave. The 'fatal mistake' came true following the box-office disaster of Heaven's Gate in 1980 which led to Transamerica selling UA to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM).
That same year, the five men forged a deal with Warner Bros. The executives formed Orion Pictures Company, named after the constellation which they claimed had five main stars (it actually has seven or eight). The new company intended only to finance projects, giving the filmmakers complete creative autonomy; this ideal had been successfully implemented at United Artists. Orion held a $100 million line of credit and its films would be distributed by the Warner Bros. studio. Orion, however, was contractually given free rein over distribution and advertising as well as the number and type of films the executives chose to invest in.
In late March 1978, Orion signed its first contract, a two-picture deal with John Travolta's production company. Contracts with actress and director Barbra Streisand; actors James Caan, Jane Fonda, Peter Sellers, Jon Voight, and Burt Reynolds; directors Francis Ford Coppola and Blake Edwards; writer/director John Milius; singer Peter Frampton; and producer Ray Stark soon materialized. Orion also developed a co-financing and distribution deal with EMI Films. In its first year, Orion had fifteen films in production and had a dozen more actors, directors and producers lining up to sign with them.
Benjamin died in October 1979. Orion's first film, A Little Romance, was released in April that year. Later that year, Orion released Blake Edwards' 10 which became a commercial success, the first for Edwards in over a decade (aside from installments of The Pink Panther franchise). Other films released by Orion over the next two years included a few successes such as Caddyshack (1980) and Arthur (1981); critically praised but underperforming films such as The Great Santini (1979), an adaptation of a Pat Conroy novel, and Sidney Lumet's Prince of the City (1981); and pictures by young writer-directors such as Philip Kaufman's The Wanderers (1979) and Nicholas Meyer's debut Time After Time (1979); plus Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) which Orion only distributed in the United States. Out of the 23 films Orion released between April 1979 and December 1981, only a third of them made a profit. Orion executives were conflicted over financing big-budgeted films and passed on Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) for that reason.
Hub AI
Orion Pictures AI simulator
(@Orion Pictures_simulator)
Orion Pictures
Orion Releasing, LLC (doing business as Orion Pictures) is an American film production and distribution company owned by the Amazon MGM Studios subsidiary of Amazon. In its current incarnation, Orion focuses primarily on producing, distributing, and acquiring independent and specialty films made by underrepresented filmmakers.
It was founded in 1978 as Orion Pictures Corporation, a joint venture between Warner Bros. and three former senior executives at United Artists (UA). The company produced and released films from 1978 through 1999 and was also involved in television production and syndication in the 1980s and early 1990s. It was one of the largest mini-major studios during its early years, when it worked with prominent directors such as Woody Allen, James Cameron, Jonathan Demme, and Oliver Stone. Four films distributed by Orion won Academy Awards for Best Picture: Amadeus (1984), Platoon (1986), Dances with Wolves (1990), and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
In 1997, Orion was acquired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), and was folded into MGM in 1999. MGM later revived the Orion name for television in 2013 and relaunched Orion Pictures a year later. In 2022, Amazon acquired Orion when it acquired MGM.
On February 6, 1978, three executives of Transamerica (TA)-owned studio United Artists (UA)—Arthur B. Krim (chairman), Eric Pleskow (president and chief executive officer), and Robert Benjamin (chairman of the finance committee)—quit their jobs. Krim and Benjamin had headed UA since 1951 and subsequently turned around the then-flailing studio with a number of critical and commercial successes. Change had begun once Transamerica purchased UA in 1967 and, within a decade, a rift formed between Krim and Transamerica chairman John R. Beckett concerning the studio's operations. Krim suggested spinning off UA into a separate company which was rejected by Beckett.
The last straw came for Pleskow when he refused to collect and deliver the medical records of UA department heads to Transamerica's offices in San Francisco for the sake of confidentiality. The tensions only worsened when Fortune magazine reported an article on the clash between UA and TA in which Beckett had stated that, if the executives disliked the parent company's treatment of them, they should resign. Krim, Benjamin and Pleskow quit UA on January 13, 1978, followed by the exits of senior vice presidents William Bernstein and Mike Medavoy three days later. The week following the resignations, according to the website Reference for Business, 63 important Hollywood figures took out an advertisement in a trade paper warning Transamerica that it had made a fatal mistake in letting the five men leave. The 'fatal mistake' came true following the box-office disaster of Heaven's Gate in 1980 which led to Transamerica selling UA to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM).
That same year, the five men forged a deal with Warner Bros. The executives formed Orion Pictures Company, named after the constellation which they claimed had five main stars (it actually has seven or eight). The new company intended only to finance projects, giving the filmmakers complete creative autonomy; this ideal had been successfully implemented at United Artists. Orion held a $100 million line of credit and its films would be distributed by the Warner Bros. studio. Orion, however, was contractually given free rein over distribution and advertising as well as the number and type of films the executives chose to invest in.
In late March 1978, Orion signed its first contract, a two-picture deal with John Travolta's production company. Contracts with actress and director Barbra Streisand; actors James Caan, Jane Fonda, Peter Sellers, Jon Voight, and Burt Reynolds; directors Francis Ford Coppola and Blake Edwards; writer/director John Milius; singer Peter Frampton; and producer Ray Stark soon materialized. Orion also developed a co-financing and distribution deal with EMI Films. In its first year, Orion had fifteen films in production and had a dozen more actors, directors and producers lining up to sign with them.
Benjamin died in October 1979. Orion's first film, A Little Romance, was released in April that year. Later that year, Orion released Blake Edwards' 10 which became a commercial success, the first for Edwards in over a decade (aside from installments of The Pink Panther franchise). Other films released by Orion over the next two years included a few successes such as Caddyshack (1980) and Arthur (1981); critically praised but underperforming films such as The Great Santini (1979), an adaptation of a Pat Conroy novel, and Sidney Lumet's Prince of the City (1981); and pictures by young writer-directors such as Philip Kaufman's The Wanderers (1979) and Nicholas Meyer's debut Time After Time (1979); plus Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) which Orion only distributed in the United States. Out of the 23 films Orion released between April 1979 and December 1981, only a third of them made a profit. Orion executives were conflicted over financing big-budgeted films and passed on Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) for that reason.