StudioCanal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
StudioCanal Image S.A. (aka Le Studio Canal+, Canal Plus, Canal + Distribution, and Canal+ Image), is a French-based production and distribution company that owns the third-largest film library in the world.
The company was founded in 1996 by Pierre Lescure. The original function was to focus on French and European productions. Over the next four years, StudioCanal began to acquire film libraries from studios that either went defunct or had merged with StudioCanal.
It was not very long before StudioCanal began co-producing films such as U-571 (2000), Bully (2001), and Bridget Jones' Diary (2001). StudioCanal also funded the last third of David Lynch's film Mulholland Drive[1].
Today, StudioCanal is a division of Vivendi SA, and has a catalogue that includes the film libraries of Carolco Pictures (Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Rambo: First Blood Part II, Basic Instinct, etc.), Embassy Pictures (The Graduate, The Producers, etc.), the Alexander Salkind pictures not owned by Warner Bros. (including Santa Claus: The Movie), the EMI Films library (Highlander, Death on the Nile, etc., but not including US rights to certain co-productions -- US rights to most of these films are owned by other major studios, ususally the original releasing studio) and the Lumiere Pictures and Television output (including The Third Man and The Avengers).
Outside France, StudioCanal does not have a formal distribution unit per se, relying on other studios and video companies to handle their product.
StudioCanal recently acquired UK-based distributor Optimum Releasing.
