Empire Pictures was a small scale theatrical distribution company that was formed in 1983 by Charles Band.
The company produced a number of low-budget horror and fantasy features including Trancers and The Dungeonmaster. It is perhaps best known for Re-Animator and Ghoulies which were major box office hits for the company in 1985.
Other Empire Pictures included From Beyond, Dolls, Troll, Crawlspace and Robot Jox. Empire Pictures began to collapse in 1989 due to financial problems.
The studio was originally situated in Rome, Italy and as of today, MGM is the current owner of a majority of the Empire Pictures library. Once it became clear that Empire would not last for more than a couple more years, Charles Band formed another company, Full Moon Entertainment, which also specializes in horror/fantasy genre films.
Empire Pictures is not to be confused with the American film distribution company of the same name, which was established in 2000 and focuses on releasing art-house and foreign films.