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TriStar Pictures, Inc. (spelled Tri-Star until 1991) is an American film studio that is a division of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group and part of Sony Pictures, which is owned by Japanese multinational conglomerate Sony Corporation.

History[]

The concept for TriStar came about in 1982 when Columbia Pictures (then a subsidiary of Coca-Cola), HBO, and CBS decided to pool resources to split the ever-growing costs of making movies, creating Nova Pictures as a joint venture.

The studio's first produced film in 1984 was The Natural starring Robert Redford. Their first release however, was the film, Where the Boys Are '84; a 1984 remake of the 1960 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer picture, Where the Boys Are that was co-distributed on behalf of ITC Entertainment after Universal rejected it; the film was a commercial flop. During this venture, many of Tri-Star's releases were released on VHS by either RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video (now Sony Pictures Home Entertainment), CBS/Fox Video (now CBS Home Entertainment and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment) and HBO/Cannon Video (now HBO Home Entertainment). In addition, HBO would gain exclusive cable distribution rights to these films, and broadcast television licenses would go to CBS.

CBS dropped out of the venture in 1985, though they still distributed some of TriStar's films on home video until at least 1992. In 1986, HBO dropped out of the Tri-Star venture as well and sold half of its shares to Columbia Pictures.

In April 1987, Tri-Star entered into the television business as Tri-Star Television. In December 1987, HBO dropped out of the Tri-Star venture as well and Columbia Pictures bought their venture shares and merged Columbia and Tri-Star into Columbia Pictures Entertainment, also creating Columbia/Tri-Star. Both companies continued to produce and distribute films under their separate names.

In December 21, 1987, Tri-Star Pictures Inc. was renamed to Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc. when Coke sold its entertainment business to Tri-Star for $3.1 billion. Both studios continued to produce and distribute films under their separate names. On April 13, 1988, CPE spun off Tri-Star Pictures, Inc. as a reformed company of the Tri-Star studio.

In 1989, Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc. was acquired by Sony Corporation of Japan, who merged Columbia and Tri-Star, but continued to use the separate labels. On July 11, 1990, Tri-Star Pictures dissolved and sold its venture in TeleVentures to Stephen J. Cannell Productions and TeleVentures became Cannell Distribution Co. Most of the series and the Tri-Star film packages that were distributed by TeleVentures were transferred to Columbia Pictures Television Distribution. The Tri-Star film packages were transferred to Columbia Pictures Television Distribution. Sony Pictures Entertainment later revived TriStar Television as a television production banner in 1991 and merged with its sister television studio Columbia Pictures Television to form Columbia TriStar Television on February 21, 1994. Both studios continued to operate separately until TriStar folded in 1999 and CPT in 2001.

In addition to it's own slate, TriStar was the theatrical distributor for many films produced by Carolco Pictures from the mid-'80s to the mid-'90s (the rights to only one of those films, Cliffhanger, has been retained by TriStar).

Around summer 1998, Sony Pictures Entertainment merged Columbia and TriStar to form Columbia TriStar Pictures (or Columbia TriStar Entertainment, Inc. or the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group) but just like Columbia Pictures Entertainment, both divisions continued producing and distributing films under their own names.

TriStar was relaunched in May 13, 2004 as a marketing and acquisitions unit that had a "particular emphasis on genre films". Screen Gems' executive vice president Valerie Van Galder was tapped to run the revived studio after being dormant. However, the release of its 2013 film Elysium represents the label's first big-budget release since The Mask of Zorro in 1998.

The same year, former 20th Century Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman joined Sony Pictures and created TriStar Productions as a joint venture with existing Sony Pictures executives. The new TriStar will develop, finance and produce up to four films per year, as well as television programming and acquisitions, starting on September 1. Sony's TriStar Pictures unit will be retained for "other product, including titles from Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions", and will distribute product from the new TriStar.

In November 2019, TriStar had been acquired by Skydance Media, Good Universe, Annapurna Pictures, Point Grey Pictures and Centropolis Entertainment.

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The company's logo of a Pegasus (either stationary or flying across the screen), introduced in 1984, has become something of a cultural icon. It has also spawned many parodies, including one on the Family Guy episode "Petergeist." The second logo was originally painted by Alan Reingold and debuted in 1993. This version, likely as Columbia Pictures has clouds. The background is nighttime blue. The clouds are orange. [1]

See also[]

References[]

  1. "Art classes with Alan Reingold". Lutheran Church of the Resurrection.
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