PolyGram Filmed Entertainment

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PolyGram Filmed Entertainment (PFE) was a London-based film studio, founded in 1979 as a European competitor to Hollywood, but eventually sold and merged with Universal Pictures in 1999.

Among its most successful films were Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and Fargo (1996). From 1989 to 1997 they co-produced with Warner Bros. the original Batman movie series directed by Tim Burton & Joel Schumacher, and starring Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and George Clooney.

The Dutch music company PolyGram (owned by Philips) created PFE in 1979 to consolidate its existing film companies. It invested US$200 million with the intention of developing a European film studio that could produce and distribute films internationally on a scale to match the major Hollywood studios.

Following the style of its music business, the company produced films through a number of creatively semi-autonomous 'labels', such as Working Title Films in the UK and Propaganda Films and Interscope Communications in the United States – It also built up it own network of distribution companies.

Film production within Polygram differed from traditional Hollywood studios, in that power to make ('green light') a film was not centralised in the hands of a small number of executives, but instead was decided by negotiations between producers, management and marketing. PFE President, Michael Kuhn, claimed that "movies sort of green lit themselves."

The company was based in the United Kingdom, and invested heavily in British film making — some credit it with reviving the British film industry in the 1990s. Despite a successful production history, Philips decided to sell PFE to the drinks conglomerate Seagram in 1999.

PFE's assets were merged into Seagram's existing film studio, Universal Pictures. Most of its library of films produced up until 1996 is now controlled by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Universal owns the rest of the pre-1996 films and the library from 1996-1999.

Contents

[edit] Production companies

[edit] Distribution company

  • PolyGram Video

[edit] Selected films

Among the films directly produced by PFE were:

[edit] Working Title

[edit] Propaganda

[edit] Interscope

[edit] Gramercy

[edit] Manga Entertainment

[edit] References

  • Michael Kuhn, One Hundred Films and a Funeral: The Life and Death of Polygram Films, Thorogood, 2002. ISBN 1-85418-216-1.
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