Embassy Pictures
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Embassy Pictures Corporation (also known as Embassy Film Associates and Avco-Embassy) was an independent studio and distributor responsible for such films as The Graduate, The Lion in Winter and Escape from New York.
The company was founded in the late 1940s by producer Joseph E. Levine, initially to distribute foreign films to the US. Some of Levine's early successes were the Italian-made Hercules films with Steve Reeves, and the original 1956 Godzilla.
As the decade turned to the 1960s, Levine transformed Embassy into a production company. Its first in-house productions were The Carpetbaggers and its prequel Nevada Smith (both co-productions with Paramount). Later in the decade, Embassy functioned on its own with many Rankin/Bass animated features (including Mad Monster Party? and The Daydreamer), and successful live-action productions, including The Graduate, The Lion in Winter, This Is Spinal Tap, Savannah Smiles, The Exterminator, Blade Runner and A Chorus Line.
In 1967, Levine sold the Embassy corporation to Avco (thus for a time becoming Avco Embassy Pictures). In 1968, Avco Embassy launched Avco Embassy Television, which became Multimedia Entertainment in 1976 (that first television division has since been folded into what is now known as NBC Universal Television Distribution, even though another company now owns television rights to the Embassy library--see below for further information). Then, in 1982, television producer Norman Lear bought the company, and formally established a television division responsible for such hit shows as The Jeffersons, Diff'rent Strokes, The Facts of Life, Who's The Boss?, 227, and Married... with Children (see Embassy Television for more information).
In 1985, Norman Lear sold Embassy to The Coca-Cola Company (then-current owners of Columbia Pictures) in order to split the corporation, keeping Embassy's television division and renaming it to Embassy Communications in 1986, then to ELP (Embassy Limited Partnership) Communications in 1988, while selling the theatrical and home video division to another entity which became Nelson Entertainment. Nelson was later acquired by Orion Pictures in conjunction with Columbia Pictures, Castle Rock Entertainment, and New Line Cinema but after Orion went bankrupt some key rights to the Embassy library transferred from company to company (Dino De Laurentiis, Parafrance International, PolyGram), while ELP Communications (now part of Sony Pictures Entertainment) retaining the television rights to the Embassy theatrical library (although Blade Runner would later revert back to Warner Bros. along with its subsidiary The Ladd Company, the film's original theatrical distributor).
Today, the Embassy corporation, its divisions and film & television holdings, are split. The theatrical rights to the Embassy film library (except Blade Runner, Time Bandits, Savannah Smiles, & Watership Down, all of which are now owned by other companies, and Embassy-distributed ITC films that are now owned by Granada International) are at the hands of French production company StudioCanal, with 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment (inheriting MGM's rights), The Criterion Collection, Home Vision Entertainment and Anchor Bay Entertainment handling video distribution (via separate output deals); while Sony owns the television rights to Embassy's entire film and television output (except The Carpetbaggers & Nevada Smith, which are now owned by Paramount; Blade Runner and Watership Down, which are owned by WB; and the aforementioned Embassy-distributed ITC films).
