Castle Rock Entertainment
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Castle Rock Entertainment is a film and television studio founded in 1987 by Martin Shafer, director Rob Reiner, Andy Scheinman, Glenn Padnick and Alan Horn, with Columbia Pictures as a strategic partner. Columbia invested at formation but shortly thereafter had to re-invest with a substantial change in terms when accumulated losses exhausted its initial funding. Originally an independent company, today, it is a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which in turn is a unit of Time Warner.
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 (produced by Norman Lear's Act III Communications), which was based on a novella by King. The first Castle Rock release 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. Despite the company's history of being sold and acquired, it never turned in a profit until its 2004 computer-animated production of The Polar Express, which is now in perpetual holiday theatrical release. Absent the films directed by Rob Reiner, which are developed by Reiner's own company, Castle Rock has never produced a successful slate of movies.[citation needed]
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 aforementioned The Polar Express (2004), Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (2005), and Music and Lyrics (2007).
The Castle Rock Entertainment title music was composed by Marc Shaiman.
Contents |
[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)
- Fracture (2007)
[edit] Selected television shows
- Seinfeld (1990-1998) (Sony Pictures Television currently owns distribution and syndication rights)
- Mission Hill (1999-2000)
[edit] Trivia
New Line Cinema and Castle Rock Entertainment have recently collaborated on Fracture (film), opening April 20th; their first joint venture since the mid-1990s before both companies were bought by Turner.
