CJ Entertainment

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CJ Entertainment (hangul:씨제이엔터테인먼트, CJ엔터테인먼트) is the largest entertainment company in South Korea. They are a branch of CJ Corporation (formerly Cheil Jedang), traditionally a food company. They are perhaps best known for their film distribution and production business.

During early 1995 Cheil Jedang invested in the upstart film company DreamWorks SKG and in June of the same year, Cheil Jedang established its own entertainment division. The division's title was changed to CJ Entertainment by September the next year, in time for their first film distribution deal with the movie Secrets and Lies. To aid their position in the film distribution industry CJ Entertainment built the first multiplexes of Korea with the first one, CGV Gangbyeon 11, opening in April of 1998.

CJ Entertainment's importance in the Korean film industry grew in 1997-1998 when the nation was caught in the wave of the Asian financial crisis. Many smaller film companies had to close up, leaving the road open for CJ Entertainment to capitalize on the new-found popularity of Korean cinema brought on by the success of Shiri in 1999.

The success of their own films, most notably Joint Security Area that broke the Korean box-office records previously set by Shiri, helped the company grow into one of the two largest film companies in the country along with Kang Woo-suk's Cinema Service. Lately CJ Entertainment has expanded into other fields of entertainment industry, including Internet and Cable TV businesses.

Beginning in 2007, CJ Entertainment will be the Korean distributor for films by Paramount Pictures (including films by DreamWorks which was recently bought by Paramount) as Universal Pictures will take over the Korean branch of its joint venture with Paramount, United International Pictures. CJ had already been distributing DreamWorks films for nearly a decade as a result of investing in the studio.