36 Facts About Universal Pictures

Universal Pictures is an American film production and distribution company owned by Comcast through the NBCUniversal Film and Entertainment division of NBCUniversal.

Universal Pictures is a member of the Motion Picture Association, and was one of the "Little Three" majors during Hollywood's golden age.

Universal Pictures was established on June 8, 1912, formed in a merger of Independent Moving Pictures, the Powers Motion Picture Company, Rex Motion Picture Manufacturing Company, Champion Film Company, Nestor Film Company, and the New York Motion Picture Company.

The new Universal Pictures studio was a vertically integrated company, with movie production, distribution, and exhibition venues all linked in the same corporate entity, the central element of the Studio system era.

Universal Pictures became the largest studio in Hollywood and remained so for a decade.

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In 1916, Universal Pictures formed a three-tier branding system for their releases.

Universal Pictures financed all of his own films, refusing to take on debt.

In 1926, Universal Pictures opened a production unit in Germany, Deutsche Universal Pictures-Film AG, under the direction of Joe Pasternak.

Nazi persecution and a change in ownership for the parent Universal Pictures organization resulted in the dissolution of this subsidiary.

In early 1927, Universal Pictures had been negotiating deals with cartoon producers since they wanted to get back into producing them.

Universal Pictures subsequently severed its link to Mintz and formed its own in-house animation studio to produce Oswald cartoons headed by Walter Lantz.

In February 2006, NBCUniversal Pictures sold all the Disney-animated Oswald cartoons, along with the rights to the character himself, to The Walt Disney Company.

Universal Pictures already had a reputation for nepotism—at one time, 70 of Carl, Sr.

Universal Pictures bought and built theaters, converted the studio to sound production, and made several forays into high-quality production.

Universal Pictures was forced to seek a $750, 000 production loan from the Standard Capital Corporation, pledging the Laemmle family's controlling interest in Universal Pictures as collateral.

The success of the film led Universal to offer her a contract, which for the first five years of her career produced her most successful pictures.

Rank and International remained interested in Universal Pictures, however, culminating in the studio's reorganization as Universal Pictures-International; the merger was announced on July 30, 1946.

Universal Pictures stopped the studio's low-budget production of B movies, serials and curtailed Universal's horror and "Arabian Nights" cycles.

Universal Pictures reduced the studio's output from its wartime average of fifty films per year to thirty-five films a year.

Universal Pictures-International became responsible for the American distribution of Rank's British productions, including such classics as David Lean's Great Expectations and Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948).

MCA owned the studio lot, but not Universal Pictures, yet was increasingly influential on Universal's products.

Television production made up much of the studio's output, with Universal Pictures heavily committed, in particular, to deals with NBC providing up to half of all prime time shows for several seasons.

Wallis retired from Universal Pictures after making the film Rooster Cogburn, a sequel to True Grit (1969), which Wallis had produced at Paramount.

In 1983, Universal Pictures launched an independent film arm designed to release specialty films, Universal Classics, and the division has sights on separation.

On October 4, 1999, Universal renewed its commitments to United International Pictures to release its films internationally through 2006.

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Universal Pictures located Japanese electronics manufacturer Matsushita Electric, which agreed to acquire MCA for $6.

In late 2005, Viacom's Paramount Universal Pictures acquired DreamWorks SKG after acquisition talks between GE and DreamWorks stalled.

Longtime studio head Ron Meyer would give up oversight of the film studio and appointed Vice Chairman of NBCUniversal Pictures, providing consultation to CEO Steve Burke on all of the company's operations.

In June 2014, Universal Pictures Partnerships took over licensing consumer products for NBC and Sprout with the expectation that all licensing would eventually be centralized within NBCUniversal Pictures.

In May 2015, Gramercy Universal Pictures was revived by Focus Features as a genre label that concentrated on action, sci-fi, and horror films.

In early 2016, Perfect World Pictures announced a long-term co-financing deal with Universal, which represents the first time a Chinese company directly invest in a multi-year slate deal with a major U S studio.

Universal Pictures took over the distribution deal with DreamWorks Animation starting in 2019 with the release of How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, after DreamWorks Animation's distribution deal with 20th Century Fox ended.

On February 15, 2017, Universal Pictures acquired a minority stake in Amblin Partners, strengthening the relationship between Universal and Amblin, and reuniting a minority percentage of the DreamWorks Pictures label with DreamWorks Animation.

In December 2019, Universal Pictures entered early negotiations to distribute upcoming feature film properties based on the Lego toys.

Pictures, Universal Pictures will serve as a distributor of future releases and will develop additional Lego films.

Universal Pictures was the first studio to have released three billion-dollar films in one year; this distinction was achieved in 2015 with Furious 7, Jurassic World, and Minions.