Embassy Pictures
Embassy Pictures Corporation was an American independent film production and distribution studio responsible for such films as Godzilla, King of the Monsters!; The Graduate; The Producers; The Lion in Winter; Carnal Knowledge; The Night Porter; Watership Down; Phantasm; The Fog; Prom Night; Scanners; The Howling; Escape from New York; and This Is Spinal Tap.
History
Founding
The company was founded in 1942 by Joseph E. Levine, initially to distribute foreign films in the United States. The company entered film production in 1945, co-producing with Maxwell Finn a documentary Gaslight Follies, a compilation of silent film clips narrated by Ben Grauer, which the company released.Success
Embassy found success in 1956 bringing the Japanese film Gojira to the American general public, acquiring the rights for $12,000 and spending $400,000 promoting it under the title Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, and earning $1 million in theatrical rentals. They then made a $100,000 deal to bring the 1954 French-Italian film Attila to the U.S. in 1958 and spent $600,000 promoting it, which returned $2 million in rentals. Their breakthrough came the following year with Hercules, starring Steve Reeves and released by Warner Bros.. Levine invested $120,000 on dubbing, sound effects and new titles and spent $1.25 million on promoting the film. It was one of the highest-grossing films of the year, with rentals of $4.7 million.Art house releases
After releasing the Hercules sequel, Hercules Unchained, Embassy expanded to add 13 offices nationally as well as offices in Rome, London and Paris and signed deals with Italian production company Titanus and producer Carlo Ponti and began distributing art films, often European ones. In 1961, Embassy bought North American distribution rights for Two Women after Levine seeing no more than three minutes of its "rushes." The film based on a novella written by Alberto Moravia, had been directed by Vittorio de Sica, and starred Sophia Loren and Eleanora Brown, who acted out the respective roles of a mother and her young daughter whom World War II had displaced from their home. Levine's promotional campaign focused on one still photograph, which showed Loren, as the mother, wearing a torn dress, kneeling in the dirt, and weeping with rage and grief. Predicting that she would win the Academy Award for her performance, Levine brought Loren to the United States for interviews, bought space for, and placed, large advertisements in newspapers, and saw to it that Two Women appeared in the cities of residence of Academy Award jury members.Levine's efforts paid off when the film was a hit and Loren became the first cast member of a foreign-language film to win the Academy Award for Best Actress. Embassy also acquired rights to and distributed Divorce Italian Style ; Salvatore Giuliano ; Federico Fellini's film 8½, as well as Ponti's producing credits including Boccaccio '70, and de Sica's Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow and Marriage Italian Style. Embassy also produced an adaptation of The Thief of Baghdad, also with Reeves in the lead, and Rick Carrier's Strangers in the City.
On the back of the success of Ingmar Bergman, Embassy released some of his earlier films in the United States, his 1949 film The Devil's Wanton in 1962 and his 1948 film Night Is My Future in 1963. Embassy also released two 1961 films produced by Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman - What a Carve Up! and The Hellfire Club. Other Ponti-produced films released by Embassy include Landru, directed by Claude Chabrol; Contempt, directed by Jean-Luc Godard; The Empty Canvas starring Bette Davis; The Ape Woman ; Casanova 70 ; The 10th Victim ; and de Sica's Sunflower.
Paramount Pictures deal
By the 1960s, Levine had transformed Embassy into a production company. In 1963, Levine was offered a $30 million deal with Paramount Pictures to produce films in the vein of his previous successes. Paramount would finance the films and Embassy would receive part of its profits. Under the deal, Levine produced Harold Robbins's The Carpetbaggers and its prequel Nevada Smith, which were successes, along with flops such as Harlow, starring Carroll Baker, and The Oscar. A third film based on a novel by Harold Robbins was also released as part of three-picture deal with Robbins, Where Love Has Gone.Embassy also released several films produced by or starring Stanley Baker including Zulu, Dingaka and Robbery.
Later in the decade, Embassy functioned on its own with many Rankin/Bass Productions animated features, including The Daydreamer and Mad Monster Party?, and successful live-action productions including The Graduate, by second-time film director Mike Nichols, The Producers, by first-time director Mel Brooks, and The Lion in Winter, which won an Academy Award for Katharine Hepburn.
New ownership under AVCO
Embassy enjoyed its greatest success with The Graduate, which became the highest-grossing film of the year. This enabled Levine to sell his company to Avco for a deal worth $40 million, although he stayed on as chief executive.Levine also started a record label with music industry executives Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore, Avco Embassy Records, later shortened to Avco Records. In 1969, the company bought out Mike Nichols production company and signed him to make two movies.
The company became less successful in the 1970s and only had hits with Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowledge and A Touch of Class. In 1972, the company had begun cutting back on production and in 1973 recorded a loss of $8.1 million. Levine resigned as president on May 28, 1974 to re-enter independent production and was replaced by Bill Chaikin. By 1975, Avco Embassy stopped making movies altogether.
In 1968, Avco Embassy launched Avco Embassy Television, to syndicate films from the Avco Embassy library on TV. In 1976, Avco Embassy sold their broadcasting division and Avco Program Sales to Multimedia, Inc., becoming Multimedia Entertainment.
Robert Rehme years
In late 1977, Avco Embassy announced its intention to resume production. In 1978, Robert Rehme was appointed president and chief operating officer and he convinced the company to give him $5 million for a production fund.Under his stewardship, Avco Embassy concentrated on lower budgeted genre films, six of which were successful: The Manitou, Phantasm, The Fog, Scanners, Time Bandits and The Howling. They benefited in part from the fact that American International Pictures recently left the exploitation field, lessening competition in this area.
Rehme left the company in 1981, having seen it increase its revenue from $20 million to $90 million.
In 1981, Tom Laughlin offered to buy the company for $24 million but withdrew his offer.
Norman Lear and Jerry Perenchio
In January 1982, television producer Norman Lear and his partner Jerry Perenchio bought the studio for $25 million, dropped "Avco" and changed the name of their own TV company T.A.T. Communications to Embassy Television and T.A.T. Communications Company to Embassy Communications, Inc. The company was producing such hits as The Jeffersons, One Day at a Time, and The Facts of Life, and by Tandem, Diff'rent Strokes and Archie Bunker's Place. During this period, they launched Silver Spoons, Square Pegs, Who's the Boss?, It's Your Move, and Gloria. They also expanded into making made-for-TV movies, including Grace Kelly and Eleanor, First Lady of the World.In late 1982, Embassy bought out Andre Blay Corporation and renamed the company as Embassy Home Entertainment; prior releases from its film catalog had been handled through Magnetic Video, as well as reissues of the Blay Video catalog. In 1984, Embassy Pictures was renamed as Embassy Films Associates. That same year, Fanny and Alexander, which it distributed in the United States, received the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
During this period, Rob Reiner, whom up to that point had been most famous for playing Mike "Meathead" Stivic on All in the Family, began his directorial career with two Embassy releases, This is Spinal Tap and The Sure Thing. His third film, Stand By Me, started at Embassy, but it almost got cancelled because of the sale to Columbia days before filming was to begin. Norman Lear ended up putting up his own money for completion funds.
Coca-Cola and others
Lear and Perenchio sold Embassy Communications to The Coca-Cola Company for $485 million on June 18, 1985. Coca-Cola, which also owned Columbia Pictures at the time, sold Embassy Pictures to Dino De Laurentiis on November 1, 1985, but kept Embassy's television division active. De Laurentiis folded the company into De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, and the home video division became Nelson Entertainment, run by Barry Spikings, along with some executives who had previously worked at DEG before it went bankrupt. Nelson Entertainment was the American subsidiary of Nelson Holdings International, a company based in Vancouver, Canada.Although De Laurentiis was now owner of Embassy, he was not given rights to then upcoming films such as Crimewave and Saving Grace, and an adaptation of Stephen King's The Body, which became Stand by Me, which became properties of Lear and Perenchio. Nelson Entertainment, in addition to primarily handling the Embassy library for home video, also financed theatrical films in conjunction with Columbia Pictures. They were one of the primary partners, along with Columbia, in the formation of Castle Rock Entertainment, due to the home video success of co-founder Rob Reiner's Embassy-produced films which they still handled. In 1988, Nelson gave the physical manufacturing and distribution duties of their home video company to Orion Pictures, and some of their film productions were acquired by Orion as well. In 1991, Nelson was sold to New Line Cinema, who renamed the video division New Line Home Video and also briefly took over Nelson's stake in Castle Rock Entertainment.
By the early 1990s, key rights to the Embassy library transferred from company to company due to the bankruptcies of the companies that separately owned them. Dino De Laurentiis's assets went to Parafrance International, in conjunction with Village Roadshow, while Nelson's assets were acquired by Credit Lyonnais Bank and later sold to PolyGram. Nelson's parent company, NHI continued to exist well into the mid-1990s.
Library ownership and property rights
Today, the Embassy corporation, its divisions and film and television holdings, are split. The underlying rights to a majority of the Embassy library are currently held by French production company StudioCanal, with individual media rights leased to other companies. The theatrical rights to the Embassy film library were previously managed by Stuart Lisell Films, and are now serviced by Rialto Pictures.Home entertainment rights were previously divided among Image Entertainment, The Criterion Collection, and Anchor Bay Entertainment, via separate output deals. Currently, the majority of the Embassy titles that were passed over to Polygram's purchase of Epic Productions are controlled by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer with 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment handling distribution for MGM, and in turn sublicensed to other video companies for its prestige titles packaged as special collectors’ editions. Any other remaining titles are handled by Lionsgate Home Entertainment, due to their longtime relationship with StudioCanal over their Carolco library.
Sony Pictures Entertainment retained the television rights to most of the Embassy theatrical library and the Embassy logo, names, and trademarks through its subsidiary ELP Communications.