| Former type | Corporation |
|---|---|
| Industry | Motion pictures |
| Fate | Bankruptcy; sold to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
| Founded | 1978 |
| Defunct | 1998 |
| Headquarters | Los Angeles, California |
| Key people | Arthur B. Krim Eric Pleskow Mike Medavoy William Bernstein Robert S. Benjamin (founders) |
| Owner(s) | Financial banking from Warner Bros. (1978–1982) Independent (1982–1988) Metromedia (1988–1997) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1998–present) |
| Divisions | Orion Classics Orion Home Video Orion Interactive Orion Television Motion Picture Corporation of America (1996–1997) The Samuel Goldwyn Company (1996–1998) |
Orion Pictures Corporation was an American independent production company that produced movies from 1978 until 1998. It was formed in 1978 as a joint venture between Warner Bros. and three former top-level executives of United Artists. Although it was never a large motion picture producer, Orion achieved a comparatively high reputation for Hollywood quality.[1] Woody Allen, James Cameron, Jonathan Demme, Oliver Stone, and several other prominent directors worked with Orion during its most successful years from 1978 to 1992. Of the films distributed by Orion, four won Academy Awards for Best Picture: Amadeus, The Silence of the Lambs, Platoon, and Dances with Wolves.
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Orion got its start in January 1978, when three disgruntled officers of United Artists (UA) – a motion picture distributor owned by the conglomerate Transamerica – quit their jobs. Arthur B. Krim, chairman; Eric Pleskow, president and chief executive officer; and Robert S. Benjamin, chairman of the finance committee, had become frustrated with the degree of control their corporate parent exerted over the operation of UA, particularly with regard to salaries and other forms of executive compensation.
Transamerica's chairman and Krim began to publicly insult each other. The final break came when Transamerica refused to provide an expensive car for one of United Artists' Hollywood executives. After twice suggesting that Transamerica loosen its grip on the company, the three abandoned ship on January 13, 1978. Three days later, two more UA executives—William Bernstein, senior vice president for business affairs, and Mike Medavoy, senior vice president for production—joined them. One week after the resignations, 63 important Hollywood figures took out an advertisement in a trade paper warning UA that it had made a fatal mistake in letting the five men leave. The "fatal mistake" came true following the Heaven's Gate debacle.
In March 1978, the five executives formed Orion Pictures, taking as their corporate symbol the constellation, which they claimed had five main stars (it actually has seven). The company—holding a $100 million line of credit—set out to finance films that would be made by independent producers and distributed by the Warner Bros. studio, with Orion maintaining full control over distribution and advertising. The new company's greatest asset was the expertise of its leaders, who had won three Academy Awards for best picture in the last three years while at UA—an unprecedented feat. Dozens of former UA employees joined their old bosses at Orion, a testament to the high esteem in which the company's management was held.
With a management team made up entirely of longtime movie industry insiders, Orion was off to a quick start. In late March 1978, Orion announced that it had signed its first contract, an agreement with actor John Travolta's newly formed production company to film two movies. In mid-April, the company announced a two-picture deal with actor Jon Voight. Contracts with actress and director Barbra Streisand, actors James Caan, Jane Fonda, Peter Sellers, and Burt Reynolds, directors Francis Ford Coppola and Blake Edwards, writer John Milius, singer Peter Frampton, and producer Ray Stark quickly followed.[2] Orion also arranged to finance and distribute films for British entertainment giant EMI. By the end of its first year, the company had put 15 films into production and had an additional 12 directors, producers, and actors set to sign on, making Orion a major Hollywood studio from its very inception.
Orion also began snatching up novels before publication at hefty prices in order to develop them as motion pictures. In 1979, the company paid $1 million for Sphinx, a book by Coma author Robin Cook, and purchased The Wolfen, the story of a group of supernatural wolves advancing on New York City. In line with its leaders' reputation for developing quirky, more sophisticated, and less commercial movies, the company also bought the rights to Final Payments, an acclaimed first novel by Mary Gordon.
In April 1979, the same year it lost Robert Benjamin, one of its original founders, Orion's first film opened in theaters. The opening Orion chose for its films featured an animated depiction of its namesake constellation. By April 1980 Orion's first set of movie releases had yielded one hit—10, starring Dudley Moore and Bo Derek—and a host of also-rans, including The Great Santini, based on a Pat Conroy novel about a Southern family, A Little Romance, and Promises in the Dark. With the studio failing to make the splash that had been anticipated, Orion and left-behind UA executives fell to sparring in the press. Orion got a shot in the arm at the end of 1980, when Woody Allen announced upon the expiration of his contract that he would be leaving UA; he planned to make three movies with his longtime collaborators at Orion.
By the end of 1981, despite releasing nine films that year, Orion had grown unhappy with its film distribution arrangement with Warner Bros. As a result, Orion ended its deal with Warner, retaining the Orion/Warner library. It began looking to expand its distribution capabilities by acquiring the assets of a failing Hollywood studio called Filmways, Inc..
Founded in 1958, Filmways had never quite made it into the big leagues of filmmaking and had lost nearly $20 million during the nine months ending in November 1981. In February 1982, Orion announced that it would take control of the company. Orion's partners in the $26 million purchase were E. M. Warburg Pincus & Company, a New York investment house, and Home Box Office, Inc. (HBO), a subsidiary of Time, Inc., that acquired in the deal pay and cable television rights to future movies produced by the studio.
Orion's interest in Filmways stemmed from the company's library of 500 films (largely inherited from American International Pictures, which Filmways had bought a few years before) as well as its distribution operation and its library of well-remembered TV shows from the late 1960s, such as Green Acres, Mister Ed and The Addams Family (two other Filmways productions, The Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction were owned by CBS). Once in power, the new management of Filmways moved to divest the company of its holdings outside the entertainment industry. Accordingly, its unprofitable publishing arm, Grosset & Dunlap, was sold, and Broadcast Electronics, a subsidiary that manufactured radio equipment, was spun off at the end of 1982 under the leadership of the unit's president.
A month after the takeover, Filmways' new owners announced their intentions to make the studio a major player in Hollywood within the next two years. As a first step in this process, Orion dismissed more than 80 Filmways employees and brought in 40 of their own people, including 15 executives. In June 1982, Filmways announced that its name would become Orion Pictures Corporation and that the company had been "quasi-reorganized" to put it on a sound financial footing. With films slated to be released through the end of 1983, Filmways was now able to proceed with a full schedule of operations. Another result of the merger was that Orion entered television production; Orion's biggest TV hit was Cagney and Lacey, which lasted six seasons on CBS.
In 1983, Orion Pictures introduced art-house division Orion Classics, luring away Michael Barker, Tom Bernard, and Marcie Bloom, who had previously run United Artists Classics.
In mid-1984, the newly revamped Orion became involved in a legal battle over control of the film The Cotton Club; Orion had invested $15 million in return for distribution rights. In a late June judgement, the studio suffered a partial defeat when the court confirmed The Cotton Club producer's license to negotiate television rights for the film. After an additional Orion investment of $10 million for prints of the movie and for advertising, the studio suffered a loss of $3 million on the project.
By July 1984, Orion had yet to generate a big hit since taking over Filmways and announced intentions to invest $100 million in order to release 12 to 16 movies a year. Of the first 18 movies the company had released as Orion Pictures Corporation, ten had been profitable, five had broken even, and three had losses of less than $2 million. "We've had some singles and doubles", but haven't "had any home runs", admitted chairman Arthur Krim at the company's 1984 annual meeting, according to the Wall Street Journal. In September of that year, however, Orion distributed what was, and probably remains, its most prestigious film, Amadeus, which went on to win huge critical acclaim and eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor (F. Murray Abraham). However, it distributed the film only in theatres; when it arrived on cable the following year, the Orion logo had been removed; producer Saul Zaentz had sold the TV rights at that time to Paramount. Warner Bros. restored the logo when it released the film on home video in 1997.
In early 1985, Orion investor HBO extended its contract with the studio to purchase rights to its films for cable television broadcast; the deal was valued at $50 to $75 million. Included in the agreement were such Orion products as Three Amigos, starring Steve Martin, and a Dino De Laurentiis epic, Tai-Pan. The company released 11 movies altogether in 1985, only one of which earned more than $10 million in United States ticket sales. Despite the high expectations that had greeted Orion's founding, the company had not produced a major hit since 10 nearly six years before. The studio's efforts to do so were hampered by an unwieldy distribution system inherited from Filmways, as well as its less-than-successful advertising campaigns.
The financially unstable Orion ventured into perilous swamps when E. M. Warburg Pincus & Company, one of the studio's original investors, became impatient with the low rate of return on its 20 percent stake in the enterprise. Worried that control of the company would fall into unfriendly hands, Orion's leaders began an urgent search for new investors. In January 1986, Warburg Pincus sold 15 percent of the studio's stock to Viacom International, a cable and broadcasting company. This was a relief to Orion's leaders, since, unlike proposed arrangements with other buyers, the deal with Viacom allowed Orion's managers to retain their positions. At this time, Orion also borrowed heavily to create a wholly owned subsidiary, Orion Home Entertainment Corporation, to distribute the studio's movies as videos.
Orion gained a second set of new investors on May 22, 1986, when Metromedia, a television and communications concern, purchased a 6.5 percent share. Metromedia was owned by John Kluge, a billionaire reputed to be the richest man in America, and an old friend of Krim. At the time of the Metromedia purchase, Orion announced that its quarterly income had fallen by more than a third. During the summer of 1986, however, the studio's luck began to change, as Back to School, an aggressively advertised film starring comedian Rodney Dangerfield, fared well at the box office. The movie would go on to become one of the year's biggest money-makers, taking in $90 million.
In December 1986, Kluge and his partner Stuart Sabotnick spent $20.4 million to increase their stake to 9.3 percent, and eventually to 12.6 percent. Orion got a fourth major shareholder one month later, when National Amusements, Inc., a Massachusetts-based chain of movie theaters, purchased 6.42 percent of the company's stock. These moves fueled speculation that the company might be the target of takeover attempts.[3][4]
Overall, despite the success of Back to School, Orion's revenues for fiscal year 1986 dropped dramatically from those of the previous year. The company reported a loss of $32 million, after releasing such expensive flops as The Bounty, starring Mel Gibson as Fletcher Christian and Anthony Hopkins as Captain Bligh. By March 1987, however, the situation had improved, and the company was able to bask in the glow of a string of critically acclaimed hits, including Platoon, which would go on to win an Academy Award for best picture, Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters, and the basketball epic Hoosiers. With a total of 18 Academy Award nominations, Orion's revenues soared to a level substantially higher than that of any other studio, and the studio had the second-highest revenues from ticket sales at the start of the year. Though by the end of 1987 Orion had slipped to fourth overall in box office receipts, the company had won seven Oscars and scored box office hits with Platoon, RoboCop, and No Way Out.
In light of these positive results, Kluge raised his stake in Orion even further in 1987, to nearly 20 percent of the company's stock. Soon Kluge was engaged in a full-scale bidding war with Orion's other major stockholder, Sumner Redstone of National Amusement Corporation. National Amusement had purchased all of Orion investor Viacom International, bringing its share of Orion to 21 percent, and then added another 5 percent for a total of 26 percent. Shortly thereafter, Kluge raised his stake to 31 percent. In February 1988, Redstone filed for permission to increase his share to 36 percent. Kluge responded by proposing to raise his stake to 57 percent. Outsiders wondered at the wisdom of such a duel. Orion's stock price was driven to perhaps unjustified heights, given the studio's high rate of long-term debt, which had reached 64 percent of capitalization.
Finally, Kluge triumphed on May 20, 1988, when he bought out Redstone's share in Orion for $78 million. Holding nearly 67 percent of Orion, Kluge became the owner of what was, in effect, a private company. Given that Orion's assets did not seem to merit the price paid, and that control of the company would have remained in friendly hands even without the buyout of Redstone, Wall Street observers were puzzled by Kluge's expenditure. "This amount is probably so small to Kluge it doesn't matter", one analyst suggested to the Wall Street Journal. "He probably burns that up in a weekend."
Orion had reason to hope that this was the case, as the studio released a series of box office bombs in 1989. Orion's offerings that year included Erik the Viking, Heart of Dixie, and The Package. The company came in last in market share among the major Hollywood studios, after the 17 films it released notched less than five percent of domestic box office revenues, pulling in just $60 million. Among its most expensive flops were Great Balls of Fire!, starring Dennis Quaid as Jerry Lee Lewis and Winona Ryder as his teenage bride; She-Devil, a domestic horror comedy featuring Meryl Streep and Roseanne Arnold; and Valmont, a remake of Les Liaisons dangereuses, an eighteenth-century novel and twentieth-century play that already had been adapted and released as Dangerous Liaisons just a few months earlier. "Weird Al" Yankovic was viewed somewhat as a potential saviour by Orion based on test screenings of his comedy UHF, but that film also proved to be a flop.
After releasing several busts the previous year, Orion announced a distribution agreement with Columbia Pictures Entertainment in February 1990, in which the much larger studio would release Orion's movies overseas. Columbia paid the studio $175 million as an advance against future earnings from all the films the company produced in the next six years, its next 50 videocassette releases, and some Orion television properties. Orion had previously relied on a patchwork quilt of distribution deals to get its movies into theaters in lucrative overseas markets, and the arrangement with Columbia allowed it to streamline and consolidate its distribution operations.
A week after the Columbia deal closed, rumors began circulating that Metromedia would sell its share of Orion. Adding to this uncertainty, 1990 soon developed into another bad year for the studio. After releasing such disasters as The Hot Spot, State of Grace, and Eve of Destruction, Orion racked up losses of $15.6 million on revenues of $134.9 million. In addition, creative accounting, which had allowed the company to postpone acknowledgement of its losses, began catching up with Orion.
The studio was in dire financial straits when it got a big break in December 1990 with the release of Kevin Costner's Western epic Dances with Wolves. It won seven Academy Awards, including best picture,[5] and became a massive hit, generating over $400 million worldwide. In March 1991, Orion followed this up with The Silence of the Lambs, a thriller starring Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins which also did very well.
Despite these two bright spots, the bulk of Orion's offerings fared poorly, and Kluge, who had kept the studio afloat through periodic injections of cash, announced that his stake in the company was up for sale. With little to offer, Orion began actively seeking a willing investor.
Signs of financial trouble at Orion were growing. Two high-profile hits were not enough to make up for several years of money-losing projects. In addition, the company had spent large sums in an attempt to begin producing shows for television, raising its long-term debt to $509 million and accepting the attendant heavy interest payments. The television unit never turned a profit. It was sold to ABC in early 1991 and became ABC Productions, although Orion continued to retain ownership of all its television output. Strapped for cash, Orion began selling off promising film projects, such as The Addams Family, at fire-sale prices in an attempt to stay in business. The Addams Family was sold to Paramount Pictures for U.S. distribution, while Orion, via Columbia, got the non-U.S. rights. In an additional failed attempt at cashing in on a failing enterprise, Orion also began releasing critically panned films for Portland-based One-Hour Pharmacy (1HRx) Entertainment.
At the 63rd Annual Awards on March 1991, host Billy Crystal made reference to Orion's financial problems in his opening monologue, joking that "Awakenings is a film about people coming out of a coma; Reversal of Fortune is about someone going into a coma, and Dances with Wolves was made by a studio in a coma."[6] In April 1991, Kluge, who still owned the bulk of the company, removed Orion's two top executives, including his friend Arthur B. Krim, and appointed younger executives from within the company to try to turn the studio around. One month later, Orion reported a loss of $48 million in its last year of operation, ceased making interest payments on its debts, and entered negotiations with its unhappy bondholders. As Orion disclosed that legal but questionable accounting practices had hidden the full extent of its losses for much of its existence, angry shareholders launched a series of lawsuits.[7] By November 1991, Orion's losses had continued to mount, and its debt had reached $690 million. Although the company was trying desperately to reach an agreement with its creditors that would allow it to release films it had finished, talks broke down early the next month.
On December 11, 1991, Orion filed for bankruptcy and protection from its creditors in federal court. Planning to reorganize under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy code, it continued to operate as "debtor in possession" of its business, according to the legal papers.
Later in December 1991, New Line Cinema Corporation, a company that had grown successful with its Nightmare on Elm Street series and the film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, put forward a plan to take over Orion. In February 1992, Orion reported that it had worked out a deal with New Line Cinema, but talks foundered on the issue of price and were finally called off in April. ABC, PolyGram, Republic Pictures, and the then-new Savoy Pictures also attempted to buy Orion, but no deal materialized.[8][9]
At the Academy Awards ceremony, broadcast on March 30, 1992, Crystal yet made another reference about Orion, this time about its demise:
Take a great studio like Orion. A few years ago, Orion released 'Amadeus', it wins Best Picture. Then, they released 'Platoon', Best Picture. Last year, 'Dances With Wolves' wins Best Picture. This year, 'The Silence Of The Lambs' is nominated for Best Picture. And, they can't afford to have another hit. But, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that Orion was just purchased and the bad news is, it was bought by the House of Representatives.
Silence of the Lambs swept all five major Academy Awards, but by then, most of its top executives, as well as the actors and producers with whom it had done business, had left the company. In their absence, Orion struggled to come up with a way to renew itself by releasing completed movies. Hollywood observers held scant hope that Orion could be resurrected in anything resembling its previous form. At the time of the collapse of the New Line Cinema deal, one executive told the New York Times, "the only other plans I'm aware of ... are tantamount to liquidation." At the end of the summer of 1992, it was uncertain whether Orion would survive.[10]
The bankruptcy of Orion delayed the release of many films the studio had produced or acquired, among them RoboCop 3, Blue Sky, Car 54, Where Are You?, Clifford, The Favor, The Dark Half, and There Goes My Baby. It was not until 1993 and 1994 that the films were finally shown.
Orion's president and chief executive officer William Bernstein left the company in 1992. He found a home at Paramount Pictures (which coincidentally was being sold to Orion's former part-owner Viacom) that same year.[5]
Orion was eventually able to exit bankruptcy in 1996, but few of the films released during the four years under bankruptcy protection were successful either critically or commercially.
In the years ahead, Orion produced very few films, and primarily released films from other producers, including LIVE Entertainment. Orion Classics, minus its founders (who had moved to Sony Pictures Entertainment and founded Sony Pictures Classics), continued to acquire popular art-house films, such as Boxing Helena, before Metromedia merged the subsidiary with Samuel Goldwyn Entertainment in 1996.
In 1997, Metromedia sold Orion (as well as Samuel Goldwyn Entertainment and Motion Picture Corporation of America) to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with the deal finalized in late 1998. One Man's Hero (1999) was the last film released by Orion.
During the 1980s, Orion's output included Woody Allen films, Hollywood blockbusters such as the first Terminator and the RoboCop films, comedies such as Throw Momma from the Train, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Something Wild and the Bill & Ted films, and best picture Academy Award winners Amadeus, Platoon, Dances with Wolves, and The Silence of the Lambs.[11]
Following is a list of the major Academy Awards (picture, director and the four acting awards) for which Orion films were nominated.
| Film (Year) | Major Oscars | Nominee | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Great Santini (1980) | Best Actor | Robert Duvall | Lost |
| Best Supporting Actor | Michael O'Keefe | Lost | |
| Arthur (1981) | Best Actor | Dudley Moore | Lost |
| Best Supporting Actor | John Gielgud | Won | |
| Amadeus (1984) | Best Picture | Won | |
| Best Actor | F. Murray Abraham | Won | |
| Tom Hulce | Lost | ||
| Best Director | Miloš Forman | Won | |
| Broadway Danny Rose (1984) | Best Director | Woody Allen | Lost |
| Ran (1985) | Best Director | Akira Kurosawa | Lost |
| Platoon (1986) | Best Picture | Won | |
| Best Director | Oliver Stone | Won | |
| Best Supporting Actor | Tom Berenger | Lost | |
| Willem Dafoe | Lost | ||
| Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) | Best Picture | Lost | |
| Best Director | Woody Allen | Lost | |
| Best Supporting Actor | Michael Caine | Won | |
| Best Supporting Actress | Dianne Wiest | Won | |
| Hoosiers (1986) | Best Supporting Actor | Dennis Hopper | Lost |
| Throw Momma from the Train (1987) | Best Supporting Actress | Anne Ramsey | Lost |
| Mississippi Burning (1988) | Best Picture | Lost | |
| Best Director | Alan Parker | Lost | |
| Best Actor | Gene Hackman | Lost | |
| Best Supporting Actress | Frances McDormand | Lost | |
| Married to the Mob (1988) | Best Supporting Actor | Dean Stockwell | Lost |
| Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) | Best Director | Woody Allen | Lost |
| Best Supporting Actor | Martin Landau | Lost | |
| Dances With Wolves (1990) | Best Picture | Won | |
| Best Director | Kevin Costner | Won | |
| Best Actor | Lost | ||
| Best Supporting Actor | Graham Greene | Lost | |
| Best Supporting Actress | Mary McDonnell | Lost | |
| The Silence of the Lambs (1991) | Best Picture | Won | |
| Best Director | Jonathan Demme | Won | |
| Best Actor | Anthony Hopkins | Won | |
| Best Actress | Jodie Foster | Won | |
| Love Field (1992) | Best Actress | Michelle Pfeiffer | Lost |
| Blue Sky (1994) | Best Actress | Jessica Lange | Won |
| Ulee's Gold (1997) | Best Actor | Peter Fonda | Lost |
Almost all of Orion's post-1982 releases, as well as most of the AIP and Filmways backlogs and all the television output originally produced and distributed by Orion Television, now bear the MGM name. However, in most cases, the 1980s Orion logo has been retained or added, in the case of the Filmways and AIP libraries.
Most ancillary rights to Orion's back catalog from the 1978–1982 joint venture period remain with Warner Bros., including such movies as Caddyshack, 10, Arthur, Excalibur, and Prince of the City. Some post-1982 films originally released by Orion - Lionheart, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Amadeus (the latter two being Saul Zaentz productions) - are currently distributed by Warner Bros. as well.
Woody Allen's films A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy and Zelig are the only Orion films from the original joint venture period now owned by MGM. Orion releases produced by the Hemdale Film Corporation and Nelson Entertainment are included in MGM's library as well, and are incorporated into the Orion library. MGM did not acquire the Hemdale films, however, (which includes The Terminator, Hoosiers, and Platoon) until it bought the Epic Productions library in 1998. The Nelson films (including the Bill & Ted films) were not acquired until MGM bought the pre-1996 library of PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, Nelson's successor-in-interest, although the television and digital rights to certain films are now held by Paramount Pictures, with television syndication handled on behalf of Paramount by Trifecta Entertainment & Media.
Many of the film and television holdings of The Samuel Goldwyn Company have now also been incorporated into the Orion library (with ownership currently held by MGM), and the copyright on some of this material is held by Orion, except The New Adventures of Flipper now carries the MGM Television Entertainment copyright.
Official site (redirects to MGM official site)
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