Orion Releasing, LLC (doing business as Orion Pictures) is an American film production and distribution company owned by the Amazon MGM Studios subsidiary of Amazon. In its current incarnation, Orion focuses primarily on producing, distributing, and acquiring independent and specialty films made by underrepresented filmmakers.
It was founded in 1978 as Orion Pictures Corporation, a joint venture between Warner Bros. and three former senior executives at United Artists (UA). The company produced and released films from 1978 through 1999 and was also involved in television production and syndication in the 1980s and early 1990s. It was one of the largest mini-major studios during its early years, when it worked with prominent directors such as Woody Allen, James Cameron, Jonathan Demme, and Oliver Stone. Four films distributed by Orion won Academy Awards for Best Picture: Amadeus (1984), Platoon (1986), Dances with Wolves (1990), and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
In 1997, Orion was acquired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), and was folded into MGM in 1999. MGM later revived the Orion name for television in 2013 and relaunched Orion Pictures a year later. In 2022, Amazon acquired MGM, making it the new owner of Orion Pictures.
History 1978–1981: Beginnings On February 6, 1978, three executives of Transamerica (TA)-owned studio United Artists (UA)—Arthur B. Krim (chairman), Eric Pleskow (president and chief executive officer), and Robert Benjamin (chairman of the finance committee)—quit their jobs. Krim and Benjamin had headed UA since 1951 and subsequently turned around the then-flailing studio with a number of critical and commercial successes. Change had begun once Transamerica purchased UA in 1967 and, within a decade, a rift formed between Krim and Transamerica chairman John R. Beckett concerning the studio's operations. Krim suggested spinning off UA into a separate company which was rejected by Beckett.Medavoy and Young, pp. 83-90
The last straw came for Pleskow when he refused to collect and deliver the medical records of UA department heads to Transamerica's offices in San Francisco for the sake of confidentiality. The tensions only worsened when Fortune magazine reported an article on the clash between UA and TA in which Beckett had stated that, if the executives disliked the parent company's treatment of them, they should resign. Krim, Benjamin and Pleskow quit UA on January 13, 1978, followed by the exits of senior vice presidents William Bernstein and Mike Medavoy three days later. The week following the resignations, according to the website Reference for Business, 63 important Hollywood figures took out an advertisement in a trade paper warning Transamerica that it had made a fatal mistake in letting the five men leave. The 'fatal mistake' came true following the box-office disaster of Heaven's Gate"Orion Pictures Corporation." Reference for Business in 1980 which led to Transamerica selling UA to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM).
That same year, the five men forged a deal with Warner Bros. The executives formed Orion Pictures Company, named after the constellation which they claimed had five main stars (it actually has seven or eight). The new company intended only to finance projects, giving the filmmakers complete creative autonomy; this ideal had been successfully implemented at United Artists. Orion held a $100 million line of credit and its films would be distributed through Warner Bros. Orion, however, was contractually given free rein over distribution and advertising as well as the number and type of films the executives chose to invest in.Medavoy and Young, pp. 95-97
In late March 1978, Orion signed its first contract, a two-picture deal with John Travolta's production company. Contracts with actress and director Barbra Streisand; actors James Caan, Jane Fonda, Peter Sellers, Jon Voight, and Burt Reynolds; directors Francis Ford Coppola and Blake Edwards; writer/director John Milius; singer Peter Frampton; and producer Ray Stark soon materialized.Associated Press. "Top Stars Join Orion Pictures" Wilmington Morning Star (November 22, 1978; page 10-A). Retrieved November 2, 2011. Orion also developed a co-financing and distribution deal with EMI Films. In its first year, Orion had fifteen films in production and had a dozen more actors, directors and producers lining up to sign with them.
Benjamin died in October 1979. Orion's first film, A Little Romance,Medavoy and Young, p. 104 was released in April that year. Later that year, Orion released Blake Edwards' 10 which became a commercial success, the first for Edwards in over a decade (aside from installments of The Pink Panther franchise). Other films released by Orion over the next two years included a few successes such as Caddyshack (1980) and Arthur (1981); critically praised but underperforming films such as The Great Santini (1979), an adaptation of a Pat Conroy novel, and Sidney Lumet's Prince of the City (1981); and pictures by young writer-directors such as Philip Kaufman's The Wanderers (1979) and Nicholas Meyer's debut Time After Time (1979); plus Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) which Orion only distributed in the United States. Out of the 23 films Orion released between April 1979 and December 1981, only a third of them made a profit.Medavoy and Young, p. 115 Orion executives were conflicted over financing big-budgeted films and passed on Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) for that reason.Medavoy and Young, p. 114-115
1982–1986: Split from Warner Bros. By early 1982, Orion had severed its distribution ties with Warner Bros., although the latter continued to distribute Orion's films in Japan until 1991. As part of the deal, the rights to Orion's films made up to that point were sold to Warner Bros. Orion was now looking to have its own distribution network by acquiring another company with such capabilities. The four partners looked into Allied Artists and Embassy PicturesMedavoy and Young, p. 122 before settling on Filmways. Orion subsequently purchased Filmways and reorganized the flailing company. New employees were hired and all of Filmways' non-entertainment assets (Grosset & Dunlap and Broadcast Electronics) were sold off. Its syndicated subsidiary Filmways Enterprises, was renamed to Orion Entertainment Corporation, and its television division was renamed to Orion Television. Later in 1982, Orion Entertainment Corporation begin handling advertising sales of programs by Colbert Television Sales.
Another result of the merger was that Orion entered television production. Orion's biggest television hit was Cagney & Lacey, which lasted seven seasons on CBS. In 1983, Orion Pictures introduced art-house division Orion Classics with executives who had previously run United Artists Classics.
Out of the initial 18 films released by the firm under the name of Orion Pictures Corporation, ten made profits, five just managed to cover their costs, and three suffered losses under $2 million. One such film, Francis Ford Coppola's The Cotton Club, was mired in legal troubles and Orion lost $3 million of its investment. "We've had some singles and doubles [but haven't] had any home runs," lamented Krim. In September 1984, Orion distributed Amadeus, which garnered many accolades, winning eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture. That year, on April 3, 1984, Orion Pictures launched Orion Entertainment Group, that would consist of four groups, Orion Television, Orion Home Video, Orion Pay Television and Orion Television Syndication, and the new organization would produce and distribute product for television, home video, pay and syndicated markets, with Jamie Kellner serving as president. On October 26, 1984, the company released the James Cameron-directed science fiction film The Terminator which was well received by critics and audience and led to a franchise involving five further films. However, Orion distributed none of the follow-ups.
For Orion, 1985 was a dismal year. All but two films, Desperately Seeking Susan and Code of Silence, made less than $10 million at the United States box office, including an unsuccessful attempt at a James Bond-type franchise, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins. Orion's haphazard distribution channels and unsuccessful advertising campaigns made it impossible to achieve a hit. Another factor was that Orion was about to venture into the video business and stopped selling home-use rights to its films. Furthermore, the production of the Rodney Dangerfield comedy Back to School was put on hold when a co-producer died, taking the film off of its Christmas 1985 release slate.Kornbluth, Jesse (April 6, 1987). "The Little Studio that Could". New York Magazine. pp. 48–54.
In January 1986, Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna, producers of the Rambo films (the first film, First Blood, was distributed by Orion) attempted to buy $55 million worth of the studio's stock through the duo's company, Anabasis. Had they succeeded, Kassar and Vajna would have controlled the board and laid off every executive save for Krim. Warburg Pincus subsequently limited its 20% stake in Orion to 5%; the remaining stock was acquired by Viacom International. Viacom hoped to use Orion's product for its pay-television channel Showtime.Medavoy and Young, p. 181. Orion expanded into home video distribution with the formation of Orion Home Entertainment Corporation in 1985, which began distributing videos under the Orion Home Video label in 1987 (before OHV's formation, HBO Video and their predecessors, as well as former Orion's partner Warner Home Video, Vestron Video and Embassy Home Entertainment, had been responsible for home media releases of Orion product).
1986–1991: Metromedia era On May 22, 1986, a 6.5% stake in Orion was purchased by Metromedia, a television and communications company controlled by billionaire (and a friend of Krim's) John Kluge. Metromedia had just divested its television station group to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (which would form what is now the Fox network). Kluge's investment in Orion came at the right time; Back to School was a success that earned $90 million at the box office. By March 1987, the studio's fortunes had increased dramatically with a succession of critical and commercial hits, including Platoon (which ultimately won a Best Picture Oscar), Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters, and the sports film Hoosiers. Orion's 1986 offerings drew 18 Academy Award nominations, more than any other studio. In 1987, Orion achieved further success with RoboCop and No Way Out. By this time, Orion's television division had expanded into the lucrative syndicated game show market under the name Century Towers Productions, a reference to Orion's street address. It produced revivals of format inherited from Heatter-Quigley Productions, owned since the late 1960s by Filmways; this included The New Hollywood Squares, which ran from 1986 to 1989, and a revival of High Rollers that aired in the 1987–88 season. 1987 also saw the arrival of former CBS/Fox Video executive Len White, who became president and CEO of Orion Home Video, with plans to release its first home video titles in the third or fourth quarter of that year; he reported to Larry Hilford, who joined the home video division two years earlier.
In January 1987, Kluge faced competition with the arrival of Sumner Redstone, whose theater chain, National Amusements, purchased 6.42% of Orion's stock. National Amusements later acquired Viacom, increasing their Orion stake to 21%, then 26%. Soon Kluge started buying more Orion stock, touching off a battle with Redstone over control of the company. Kluge won on May 20, 1988, when Metromedia took over about 67% of Orion. One analyst told The Wall Street Journal: "This amount is probably so small to Kluge it doesn't matter. He probably burns that up in a weekend."