EMI Films was a British film and television production company and distributor. The company was formed after the takeover of Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC) in 1968 by EMI.
Its major successes as a film producer include the 1978 Academy Award for Best Picture winner The Deer Hunter, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and in the 1980s, Bad Boys and Frances. In the early-1980s, the film division was renamed Thorn EMI Screen Entertainment, to reflect EMI's merger with Thorn Electrical Industries to become Thorn EMI, years earlier.
Thorn EMI later sold its film, home video, and theater operations (which were inherited from ABPC) to businessman Alan Bond in April 1986. Bond, in turn, sold it to The Cannon Group a week later.[1] A year after the purchase, a cash-strapped Cannon sold the film library to Weintraub Entertainment Group.[2] The library ended up in the hands of several companies over the years and is now owned by StudioCanal, ironically a sister company to EMI's rival and soon to be acquirer Universal Music Group. EMI Films also owned Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, England; Cannon ended up purchasing the studio as well, but later sold it to Brent Walker Group plc in 1988.[3]
EMI is also known for backing off on the funding for Monty Python's Life of Brian at the last moment, after an EMI executive read the script.