Carolco Pictures
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Carolco Pictures, Inc. was an independent production company, that within a decade went from producing such blockbuster successes as Terminator 2: Judgment Day and the Rambo series to being made bankrupt by bombs such as Cutthroat Island and Showgirls.
The company was founded by two film investors, Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna, as Anabasis Investments. Their goal was to make their new studio a major independent production company producing A-movie product.
One of the first Anabasis/Carolco films was First Blood (1982), followed by the sequel Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) (released the year it was re-christened Carolco) with Sylvester Stallone (who later signed a ten-picture deal with the studio). The release of First Blood Part II was so instrumental to Carolco's financial success that from then on, the music of the company's logo utilizes the first stanza of its famous score, written by Jerry Goldsmith.
With this success, Carolco went on to acquire the rights to the Terminator franchise from Hemdale Film Corporation. The company re-hired Terminator director James Cameron (who had also worked as a screenwriter on Rambo), and Arnold Schwarzenegger to star, in a multi-million-dollar budgeted sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day (released in 1991). It was the highest-grossing film of its year, and as it turned out, the most successful film in Carolco's history.
Among the other films in Carolco's library were: Extreme Prejudice, Angel Heart, Cliffhanger (also starring Stallone), Chaplin, The Doors (directed by Oliver Stone), Total Recall (another Schwarzenegger box-office hit), Basic Instinct, Iron Eagle II, and Stargate. About 80% of their entire output was released through TriStar Pictures. At the time Terminator 2 and Total Recall broke records for the largest production budget for a feature film.
In later years, Carolco acquired television syndicator Orbis Communications and initiated television production and distribution. They also purchased the former DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group production facility in North Carolina (where the television series Matlock was partially filmed), and established a home video division (with Live Entertainment, later Artisan Entertainment and Lions Gate Home Entertainment, as output partner).
Carolco struggled for some years to secure the rights to Spider-Man, a property that Cameron was keen to produce as a film. Plans fell through, although it would eventually be made as a Sam Raimi film for Columbia Pictures.
As budgets for their feature films grew, the box-office intake fell. Following the disastrous releases of Cutthroat Island and Showgirls, Carolco went bankrupt and the company closed soon after.
The assets of Carolco were later sold off to other companies, most already sold during Carolco's existence. Today, the ancillary rights to a majority of Carolco's library are held by French production company StudioCanal, while CBS Paramount Television holds the television rights, and Lions Gate continues to hold the US/Canadian home video rights (via a new output deal with StudioCanal), while the international home video rights are held by a different company for each country—for example, the UK rights are with Momentum Pictures (a subsidiary of Alliance Atlantis), and the Australian rights rest with Universal Studios. The only Carolco films not included in the deal are Cliffhanger, Aces: Iron Eagle III, Last of the Dogmen, and Showgirls; the rights to these have been retained by their original theatrical distributors (TriStar Pictures, New Line Cinema, Savoy Pictures/HBO, and United Artists, respectively).
