Castle Rock Entertainment

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Castle Rock Entertainment was an independent film and television studio founded in 1987 by Martin Shafer, director Rob Reiner, Andy Scheinman, Glenn Padnick and entertainment mogul Alan Horn, with Columbia Pictures as a strategic partner. Today, it is a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Entertainment.

Reiner named the company in honor of a fictional town from the book The Dead Zone written by Stephen King, after the success of the film Stand by Me, which was based on a novella by King. The first film that was released by this studio was When Harry Met Sally…, which was co-produced with Nelson Entertainment (whose holdings were sold in part to now-corporate sibling New Line Cinema) and Columbia Pictures. Columbia handled Castle Rock films' distribution up until 1999.

In 1994, Castle Rock was acquired by Turner Broadcasting System, which was eventually merged into Time Warner. In 1999, Warner Bros. and Universal assumed distribution rights beginning with The Green Mile (WB handled domestic distribution, while Universal handled the foreign rights). In 2003, WB assumed full distribution of all Castle Rock films worldwide.

The worldwide home video and European theatrical rights to all Castle Rock films up to 1994 (with the exception of co-productions with Columbia such as In the Line of Fire and A Few Good Men) are now owned by MGM (having inherited some holdings from Nelson Entertainment), while the remaining rights as well as post-1994 Castle Rock films (except the US rights to The Story of Us and The Last Days of Disco, along with the international rights to The American President, all of which are held by Universal) are now part of WB's library. A bit of irony can be seen in MGM's rights, since Columbia's parent company, Sony Pictures Entertainment, led a partnership that purchased MGM in 2005, thus most of the rights to these films would come full-circle, though video rights to the films owned through MGM now rest with 20th Century Fox.

Castle Rock's most recent productions are the computer animated film The Polar Express (2004), and Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (2005).

The Castle Rock Entertainment title music was composed by Marc Shaiman.

[edit] Selected films

• When Harry Met Sally... (1989)
• A Few Good Men (1992)
• North (1994)
• The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
• Ghosts of Mississippi (1996)
• Hamlet (1996)
• Alaska (1996)
• Waiting for Guffman (1997)
• Best in Show (2000)
• A Mighty Wind (2003)
• Kangaroo Jack (2003)
• The Polar Express (2004)

[edit] Selected television shows

• Seinfeld (1990-1998) (Sony Pictures Television currently owns distribution and syndication rights)
• Mission Hill (1999-2000)

[edit] External links

• Castle Rock Entertainment at the Internet Movie Database