Carolco Pictures

independent film company formed in 1976 by Mario F. Kassar and Andrew G. Vajna as Anabasis Investments. in 1984 Anabasis Investments was reincorporated as Carolco Pictures, Inc. The name was purchased from a defunct company and has no meaning. On May 15th, 1984 they entered a long-term agreement with Tristar Pictures. Through the agreement, Tristar would provide North American distribution rights, HBO would handle pay TV rights, and Thorn EMI Video would handle home video rights. This agreement lasted until 1994. in 1986, they started an agreement that caled for Tristar to disitribute Carolco products. That year, Carolco acquired International Video Entertainment. On August 28th, 1987 Carolco acquired Orbis Communications for 15.4 million dollars, and then in 1991 they would be merged into Carolco Television Productions. Carolco also had the TV rights to The Vista Organization Hemdale Film Corporation Island Alive De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (except their Embassy library) [they ended up buying their production facilities later] and Pacific International Enterprises. in November 1989, Vajna formed Cinergi Pictures Entertainment with The Walt Disney Company as a distribution partner. The following month he sold his share of Carolco to Kassar for 106 million dollars due to increasing disagreement between the two over the direction of the company. in 1990 Pioneer Corporation acquired a share of Carolco. Halfway through the year, Carolco entered a joint venture with New Line Cinema to start Seven Arts Pictures, which then collapsed in 1992. The company also formed Carolco Home Video, with Live Home Video as an output partner. By 1992 Carolco entered financial trouble due to overspending, reliance on star power and far-fetched deals, mixing blockbusters with unprofitable films and losses of partnerships. That year, the company went through a corporate restructuring, and invested in a partnership with Rizzoli-Corriere della Sera, Le Studio Canal+, Pioneer Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. Each partner helped put $60M into the studio's stock and another $50M into co-financing deals. The following year Carolco was forced to sell its shares in Live to a group of investors led by Pioneer. Carolco filed a lawsuit against Columbia Pictures and Viacom to gain the home video and TV rights to a Spider-Man movie. They counter-sued Carolco, and Carolco also got sued by MGM. In late October 1993 Carolco merged with The Vista Organization and made a new agreement with MGM to distribute its films in North America. In April 1995, the studio announced that it was unable to make payments on $55M in debt, and in November they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Carolco went bankrupt and agreed to sell its assets to 20th Century Fox for $50M. in January 1996, Canal+ made a $58M bid for Carolco's library. Not too later, 20th Century Fox, which by then lowered its price to $47.5M dropped its deal. Carolco closed soon after. in 2015 Film producer Alexander Bafer purchased the Carolco name and logo and adopted it for Brick Top Productions. The new Carolco ran into legal trouble with over the Carolco name and logo. In 2017, StudioCanal and Carolco reached an agreement where StudioCanal would have sole control of the name and logo, and that Carolco would be renamed into "Recall Studios". this took effect on November 29th. Today, the rights to a majority of Carolco's library including the name and logo are held by StudioCanal, North American TV and streaming rights belong to Paramount Pictures through Trifecta Entertainment & Media (due to a TV distribution deal with Worldvision Enterprises), and home video rights are held by Lionsgate Home Entertainment (via a new output deal with StudioCanal).