Buena Vista Distribution

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For other meanings, see Buena Vista.

Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, Inc. is a motion picture and television feature distribution company owned by The Walt Disney Company. Buena Vista International is the worldwide equivalent, and Buena Vista Home Entertainment is the firm's video and DVD distribution arm.

Prior to 1953, Walt Disney's productions were distributed by either United Artists or RKO Radio Pictures. However, a dispute over the value of Disney's True-Life Adventures series of live-action documentary featurettes led to Walt and his older brother Roy Oliver Disney founding the Buena Vista Distribution Company to handle the distribution of their own product. Buena Vista's first release was the Academy Award winning live-action feature The Living Desert.

The company name comes from Buena Vista Street, the road on which the current Walt Disney Studios and company headquarters are situated in Burbank, California.

Buena Vista production logo, 1950s.
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Buena Vista production logo, 1950s.

The company distributes all features produced by Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, DisneyToon Studios, Touchstone Television, Miramax Films, Pixar Animation Studios, and several small independent companies which employ Buena Vista to distribute their films.

Buena Vista has a television division, Buena Vista Television, which syndicates shows such as The Golden Girls, Home Improvement, Boy Meets World, sister Disney division ABC's Desperate Housewives and Lost to broadcasters around the world. It also syndicates the daily talk shows Live with Regis and Kelly, The Tony Danza Show, and weekly film-review program Ebert & Roeper.

The current company logo is a silhouette of the iconic Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland, the company's flagship theme park which opened a year after the company was founded.

Buena Vista International is the current international distributor of most films made by Spyglass Entertainment.

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