title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: Anderson was born in Studio City, Los Angeles, to Edwina (née Gough) and Ernie Anderson. Ernie was an actor who was the voice of ABC and a Cleveland television late-night horror movie host known as "Ghoulardi" (after whom Anderson later named his production company). Anderson grew up in the San Fernando Valley, one of four siblings. He has five half-siblings by his father's first marriage. He had a troubled relationship with his mother, but was close with his father, who encouraged him to become a writer or director. Anderson attended a number of schools, including Buckley, John Thomas Dye School, Campbell Hall School, Cushing Academy, and Montclair Prep.


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: Anderson was involved in filmmaking from a young age, and never really had an alternative plan to directing films. He made his first film when he was eight, and started making films on a Betamax video camera that his father bought in 1982. He later started using 8 mm film, but realized that video was easier. He began writing in his teen years and experimenting with a Bolex 16-mm camera. After years of experimenting with "standard fare", he wrote and filmed his first real production as a senior in high school at Montclair Prep using money he earned cleaning cages at a pet store. The film was a 30-minute mockumentary shot on video called "The Dirk Diggler Story" (1988), about a pornography star; the story was inspired by John Holmes, who also served as a major inspiration for "Boogie Nights".


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: Anderson attended Santa Monica College before enrolling and spending two semesters as an English major at Emerson College where he was taught by David Foster Wallace, and only two days at New York University before he began his career as a production assistant on television, films, music videos, and game shows in Los Angeles and New York City. Feeling that the material shown to him at film school turned the experience into "homework or a chore", Anderson decided to make a 20-minute film that would be his "college".


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: For $10,000, made up of gambling winnings, his girlfriend's credit card, and money his father set aside for him for college, Anderson made "Cigarettes & Coffee" (1993), a short film connecting multiple story lines with a $20 bill. The film was screened at the 1993 Sundance Festival Shorts Program. He decided to expand the film to feature-length, and was invited to the 1994 Sundance Feature Film Program. Michael Caton-Jones served as Anderson's mentor. He saw Anderson as someone with "talent and a fully formed creative voice, but not much hands-on experience", and gave him some hard and practical lessons.


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: While at the Sundance Feature Film program, Anderson already had a deal with Rysher Entertainment to direct his first full-length feature, "Sydney", retitled "Hard Eight". After completing the film, Rysher re-edited it. Anderson, who still had the workprint of his original cut, submitted the film to the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, where it was shown at the Un Certain Regard section. Anderson managed to get the version released, but only after he retitled the film, and raised the $200,000 necessary to finish it. Anderson, Philip Baker Hall, John C. Reilly and Gwyneth Paltrow contributed to the final funding. The version that was released was Anderson's and the acclaim from the film launched his career. The film follows a senior gambler, who takes a homeless man under his wing, while he becomes romantically involved with a troubled waitress. It also featured Philip Seymour Hoffman as an arrogant gambler, beginning a five-film collaboration between the pair. In his review of the film, "Chicago Sun-Times" critic Roger Ebert wrote, "Movies like "Hard Eight" remind me of what original, compelling characters the movies can sometimes give us."


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: Anderson worked on the script for his second feature film during his troubles with "Hard Eight", and completed it in 1995. The result was his breakout film "Boogie Nights", which is based on his short film "The Dirk Diggler Story", and is set in the Golden Age of Porn. The film follows a nightclub dishwasher (Mark Wahlberg) who becomes a popular pornographic actor under his stage name. The script was noticed by New Line Cinema's president, Michael De Luca, who felt "totally gaga" reading it. It was released on October 10, 1997, and was a critical and commercial success. The film revived the career of Burt Reynolds, and provided breakout roles for Wahlberg and Julianne Moore. After the film's production, Reynolds refused to star in Anderson's third film, "Magnolia". At the 70th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for three awards, including for Best Supporting Actor (Reynolds), Best Supporting Actress (Moore), and Best Original Screenplay.


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: After the success of "Boogie Nights", New Line told Anderson that he could do whatever he wanted for his next film, and granted him creative control. Though Anderson initially wanted to make a film that was "intimate and small-scale", the script "kept blossoming". The resulting film was the ensemble piece "Magnolia" (1999), which tells the story of the peculiar interaction of several individuals in the San Fernando Valley. Anderson used the music of Aimee Mann as a basis and inspiration for the film, commissioning her to write eight new songs. At the 72nd Academy Awards, the film was nominated for three Academy Awards, including for Best Supporting Actor (Tom Cruise), Best Original Song for "Save Me" by Aimee Mann, and Best Original Screenplay. Anderson stated after the film's release, "what I really feel is that "Magnolia" is, for better or worse, the best movie I'll ever make."


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: After the success of "Magnolia", Anderson stated that he would like to work with Adam Sandler in the future, and that he was determined to make his next film a comparatively shorter length of 90 minutes. The resulting feature was the romantic comedy-drama film "Punch-Drunk Love" (2002), starring Sandler, with Emily Watson portraying his love interest. The story centers on a beleaguered small-business owner with anger issues and seven emasculating sisters. A subplot in the film was partly based on David Phillips (also called the Pudding Guy). Sandler received critical praise for his role in his first major departure from the mainstream comedies that had made him a star. At the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, Anderson won the Best Director Award and was nominated for the Palme d'Or.


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: "There Will Be Blood" (2007) was loosely based on Upton Sinclair's novel "Oil!". It follows a ruthless silver miner exploiting the Southern California oil boom in the early 20th century. Against a budget of $25 million, the film earned $76.1 million worldwide. "There Will Be Blood" received eight Academy Award nominations, tying with "No Country for Old Men" for the most nominations that year. Anderson was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, losing all three to the Coen Brothers for "No Country for Old Men". Daniel Day-Lewis won the Oscar for Best Actor and Robert Elswit won the prize for Best Cinematography. Paul Dano received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Anderson was nominated for Best Director from the Directors Guild of America. "There Will Be Blood" was regarded by some critics as one of the greatest films of the decade, with some parties further declaring it one of the most accomplished American films of the modern era. David Denby of "The New Yorker" wrote, "the young writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson has now done work that bears comparison to the greatest achievements of Griffith and Ford", while Richard Schickel proclaimed it "one of the most wholly original American movies ever made." In 2017, "New York Times" film critics A. O. Scott and Manohla Dargis named it the "Best Film of the 21st Century So Far".


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: In December 2009, Anderson was working on a new project about a "charismatic intellectual" who starts a new religion in the 1950s. An associate of Anderson's stated that the idea for the film had been in Anderson's head for about 12 years. "The Master" was released on September 14, 2012 in North America to critical acclaim. The film follows an alcoholic World War II veteran, who meets the leader of a religious movement known as "The Cause". Though the film makes no reference to the movement, it has "long been widely assumed to be based on Scientology." The film received three nominations at the 85th Academy Awards, including for Joaquin Phoenix for Best Leading Actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman for Best Supporting Actor, and Amy Adams for Best Supporting Actress.


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: Production of the film adaptation for Thomas Pynchon's 2009 novel "Inherent Vice" began in May and ended in August 2013. The film marked the first time that Pynchon allowed his work to be adapted for the screen, and had Anderson work with Phoenix for a second time. The supporting cast includes Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, Jena Malone, Martin Short, Benicio Del Toro, Katherine Waterston, and Josh Brolin. Following its release in December 2014, the film received two nominations at the 87th Academy Awards, including for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Costume Design.


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: Anderson directed "Junun", a 2015 documentary about the making of the album by composer and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, Israeli composer Shye Ben Tzur, and a group of Indian musicians. Most of the performances were recorded at the 15th-century Mehrangarh Fort in Rajasthan. "Junun" premiered at the 2015 New York Film Festival.


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: Anderson's eighth feature film, "Phantom Thread", set in the London fashion industry in 1954, was released in late 2017. Day-Lewis starred in his final film role to date, after starring in his penultimate film "Lincoln". The cast also includes Lesley Manville, Vicky Krieps and Richard Graham. Focus Features distributed the film in the United States, with Universal handling international distribution. Principal photography began in January 2017. Elswit was absent during production, and despite claims of Anderson acting as a cinematographer on the film, no official credit was given. On February 16, 2019, Elswit stated he would not work with Anderson on his next films. The film received six nominations at the 90th Academy Awards, winning one for Best Costume Design.


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: His next film was announced to be produced by Focus Features on December 18, 2019. On July 17, 2020, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer replaced Focus as the film's production company. The film takes place in the 1970s and is about a high school-aged actor, with production having begun in August 2020. The film, called "Licorice Pizza", had finished principal photography by November 2020, with post-production having begun. On April 20, 2021, it was announced that the film was set for a limited release on November 26 and a wide release on December 25. "Licorice Pizza" received three Academy Award nominations, including for Best Picture and Best Director.


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: In 2000, Anderson wrote and directed a segment for "Saturday Night Live" with Ben Affleck, "SNL FANatic", based on the MTV series "FANatic". He was a standby director during the 2005 filming of Robert Altman's "A Prairie Home Companion" for insurance purposes, as Altman was 80 years old at the time. In 2008, Anderson co-wrote and directed a 70-minute play at the Largo Theatre, comprising a series of vignettes starring Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen, with a live score by Jon Brion.


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: Anderson has directed music videos for artists including Fiona Apple, Radiohead, Haim, Joanna Newsom, Aimee Mann, Jon Brion, and Michael Penn. Anderson directed a short film for Haim in 2017, "Valentine", featuring three musical performances from the band. In 2019, Anderson directed the short film "Anima," starring singer Thom Yorke and featuring music from Yorke's "Anima" album. It was screened in select IMAX theatres on June 26 and released on Netflix on June 27.


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: Anderson attended film school for only two days, preferring instead to learn by watching the films of directors he liked along with the accompanying director's audio commentary. He has cited Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, Jonathan Demme, Martin Scorsese, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Max Ophüls, John Huston, Anthony Mann, David Mamet, Francois Truffaut, Vincente Minnelli, Akira Kurosawa, Steven Spielberg, Billy Wilder, Mike Leigh, Frank Tashlin, and Robert Downey, Sr. as influences.


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: Anderson is known for films set in San Fernando Valley with realistically flawed and desperate characters. Among the themes dealt with in Anderson's films are dysfunctional familial relationships, alienation, surrogate families, regret, loneliness, destiny, the power of forgiveness, and ghosts of the past. Anderson makes frequent use of repetition to build emphasis and thematic consistency. In "Boogie Nights", "Magnolia", "Punch Drunk Love" and "The Master", the phrase "I didn't do anything" is used at least once, developing themes of responsibility and denial. Anderson's films are known for their bold visual style which includes stylistic trademarks such as constantly moving camera, steadicam-based long takes, memorable use of music, and multilayered audiovisual imagery. Anderson tends to reference the Book of Exodus, either explicitly or subtly, such as in recurring references to Exodus 8:2 in "Magnolia", which chronicles the plague of frogs, culminating with the literal raining of frogs in the film's climax, or the title and themes in "There Will Be Blood", a phrase in Exodus 7:19, which details the .


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: Within his first three films, "Hard Eight", "Boogie Nights", and "Magnolia", Anderson explored themes of dysfunctional families, alienation, and loneliness. "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia" were noted for their large ensemble casts, which Anderson returned to in "Inherent Vice". In "Punch-Drunk Love", Anderson explored similar themes, but expressed a different visual style, shedding the influences and references of his earlier films, being more surreal and having a heightened sense of reality. It was also short, compared to his previous two films, at 90 minutes.


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: "There Will Be Blood" stood apart from his first four films, but shared similar themes and style such as flawed characters, moving camera, memorable music, and a lengthy running time. The film was more overtly engaged with politics than his previous films had been, examining capitalism and themes such as savagery, optimism, and obsession. "The Master" dealt with "ideas about American personality, success, rootlessness, master-disciple dynamics, and father-son mutually assured destruction." All of his films deal with American themes, with business versus art in "Boogie Nights", ambition in "There Will Be Blood", and self-reinvention in "The Master".


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: Anderson frequently collaborates with many actors and crew, carrying them over on each film. He has referred to regular actors as "my little rep company", including John C. Reilly, Philip Baker Hall, Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, Melora Walters and, most prominently, the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. Luis Guzmán is also considered Anderson's regular. Hoffman acted in Anderson's first four films as well as "The Master". Except for Paul F. Tompkins, Kevin Breznahan and Jim Meskimen, who all had equally minor roles in "Magnolia", "There Will Be Blood" had an entirely new cast. Anderson is one of three directors – the others being Jim Sheridan and Martin Scorsese – with whom Daniel Day-Lewis has collaborated more than once. Robert Elswit served as a cinematographer for Anderson's films, except "The Master" which was shot by Mihai Mălaimare Jr. and "Phantom Thread" which has no credited cinematographer. Jon Brion served as a composer for "Hard Eight", "Magnolia" and "Punch-Drunk Love," and Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead for every film since. Dylan Tichenor edited "Boogie Nights", "Magnolia", "There Will Be Blood" and "Phantom Thread". Anderson regularly works with producers, JoAnne Sellar, Scott Rudin, Michael De Luca and Daniel Lupi, and casting director Cassandra Kulukundis.


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: Anderson dated musician Fiona Apple from 1997 to 2000. Apple said he had a temper and once threw a chair across the room and shoved her out of his car, and that he made her "fearful and numb".


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: Anderson has been in a relationship with actress and comedian Maya Rudolph since November 2001. They live in the San Fernando Valley with their four children.


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: Anderson has been called "one of the most exciting talents to come along in years" and "among the supreme talents of today." After the release of "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia", Anderson was praised as a "wunderkind". In 2007, the American Film Institute regarded him as "one of American film's modern masters." In 2012, "The Guardian" ranked him number one on its list of "The 23 Best Film Directors in the World," writing "his dedication to his craft has intensified, with his disdain for PR and celebrity marking him out as the most devout filmmaker of his generation." In 2013, "Entertainment Weekly" named him the eighth-greatest working director, calling him "one of the most dynamic directors to emerge in the last 20 years." Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" wrote that ""The Master", the sixth film from the 42-year-old writer-director, affirms his position as the foremost filmmaking talent of his generation. Anderson is a rock star, the artist who knows no limits."


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: Other directors have also praised him. In an interview with Jan Aghed, Ingmar Bergman referenced "Magnolia" as an example of the strength of American cinema. Sam Mendes referred to Anderson as "a true auteur – and there are very few of those who I would classify as geniuses". In his acceptance speech for the Golden Globe Award for Best Director, Ben Affleck compared Anderson to Orson Welles.


title: Paul Thomas Anderson

text: , Anderson is the only person to win all three director prizes from the three major international film festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Venice).


title: Orlando Bloom

text: Orlando Jonathan Blanchard Copeland Bloom (born 13 January 1977) is an English actor. He made his breakthrough as the character Legolas in "The Lord of the Rings" film series "" (2001), "" (2002), and "" (2003). He reprised his role in "The Hobbit" film series. He gained further notice appearing in epic fantasy, historical, and adventure films, notably as Will Turner in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" film series, "" (2003), "" (2006), and "" (2007).


title: Orlando Bloom

text: Bloom appeared in Hollywood films such as the war film "Black Hawk Down" (2001), the Australian Western "Ned Kelly" (2003), the romantic comedy "Elizabethtown" (2005), and "New York, I Love You" (2007). He also starred in the blockbusters portraying Paris in historical epic "Troy" (2004) Balian de Ibelin in another historical epic "Kingdom of Heaven" (2005), and the Duke of Buckingham in "The Three Musketeers" (2011). In 2020 he gained acclaim for the Afghanistan War drama film "The Outpost" (2020). He currently stars in the Amazon Prime Video series "Carnival Row" (2019–present).


title: Orlando Bloom

text: He made his professional stage debut in "In Celebration" at the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End in 2007 and starred in a Broadway adaption of William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" in 2013. He returned to the theatre in a West End revival of Tracy Letts' "Killer Joe" in 2018. In 2009, Bloom was named a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. In 2015 he received the BAFTA Britannia Humanitarian Award.


title: Orlando Bloom

text: Bloom was born on 13 January 1977 in Canterbury, Kent, and was named after the 16th-century English composer Orlando Gibbons. He has an older sister, Samantha Bloom.


title: Orlando Bloom

text: Bloom initially believed that his biological father was his mother's husband, the South African-born anti-apartheid novelist Harry Bloom (1913–1981), who died when Bloom was four years old. However, when he was thirteen, Bloom's mother revealed to him that his biological father was actually Colin Stone, his mother's partner and family friend. Stone, the principal of the Concorde International language school, became Orlando Bloom's legal guardian after Harry Bloom's death.


title: Orlando Bloom

text: Bloom's mother, Sonia Constance Josephine ("née" Copeland), was born in Kolkata, India, the daughter of Francis John Copeland, a physician and surgeon, and Betty Constance Josephine ("née" Walker). Through her, Bloom is a cousin of photographer Sebastian Copeland. Bloom's mother's family lived in Tasmania (Australia), Japan, and India, and were of English descent, some of them having originally come from Kent.


title: Orlando Bloom

text: Bloom was brought up in the Church of England. He attended St Peter's Methodist Primary School, then the junior school of The King's School before proceeding to St Edmund's School Canterbury. Bloom was discovered to be dyslexic, and was encouraged by his mother to take art and drama classes. After being spurred into action following his school prize submission to panto actor Richard Sieben in 1992, in 1993, he moved to London to follow a two-year A-Level course in Drama, Photography and Sculpture at Fine Arts College, Hampstead. He then joined the National Youth Theatre, spending two seasons there and earning a scholarship to train at the British American Drama Academy. Bloom began acting professionally with television roles in episodes of "Casualty" and "Midsomer Murders", and subsequently made his film debut in "Wilde" (1997), opposite Stephen Fry, before entering the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where he studied acting.


title: Orlando Bloom

text: Bloom's first appearance on the screen was in a small role, as a rent boy, in the 1997 film "Wilde". Two days after graduating from Guildhall in 1999, he was cast in his first major role, playing Legolas in "The Lord of the Rings" film trilogy (2001–2003). He had originally auditioned for the part of Faramir, who does not appear until the second movie, but the director, Peter Jackson, cast him as Legolas instead. While shooting a scene, he broke a rib after falling off a horse, but eventually recovered and continued shooting. At the same time, Bloom also played a brief role in Ridley Scott's war film "Black Hawk Down" as PFC Todd Blackburn. In 2002, he was chosen as one of the "Teen People" "25 Hottest Stars Under 25" and was named "People" hottest Hollywood bachelor in the magazine's 2004 list. All members of the cast of the Rings films were nominated for Best Ensemble Acting at the Screen Actors Guild Awards for three years in a row, finally winning in 2003 for the third film, "". Bloom has also won other awards, including European Film Awards, Hollywood Festival Award, Empire Awards and Teen Choice Awards, and has been nominated for many others. Most of Bloom's box office successes have been as part of an ensemble cast.


title: Orlando Bloom

text: Bloom next starred opposite Keira Knightley and Johnny Depp in "", which was a blockbuster hit during the summer of 2003. After the success of "Pirates", Bloom next took to the screen as Paris, the man who effectively started the Trojan War, in the 2004 Spring blockbuster, "Troy" opposite Brad Pitt, Eric Bana and Peter O'Toole. He subsequently played the lead roles in Ridley Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven" and Cameron Crowe's "Elizabethtown" (both 2005). In 2006, Bloom starred in sequel "" and in the independently made "Haven", of which he was also executive producer. In the same year he was one of the guest stars in the sitcom "Extras", in which he portrayed an exaggeratedly arrogant, narcissistic version of himself who had a great loathing for Johnny Depp (his co-star in "Pirates of the Caribbean"); Bloom pushed for "Extras" to go further by making his part unlikable, and contributed to the gag about him admiring Depp out of sheer jealousy, that Depp was far more talented than he was, not to mention rated higher than him on the 'top hottest' charts. Also in 2006, Bloom was the most searched male on Google News. As of May 2007, Bloom has appeared in four of the top 15 highest-grossing films of all time.


title: Orlando Bloom

text: Bloom then again portrayed Will Turner, in "", released on 24 May 2007. Bloom, who had intended to become a stage actor after graduating from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, had stated that he would like to leave films for a time and instead appear in stage roles, and is "avidly looking for the right sort of material that [he] can do something with" and go "back to basics." During the summer of 2007 he appeared in a London revival of "In Celebration", a play by David Storey. His character was one of three brothers returning home for their parents' 40th wedding anniversary. On 24 August 2007 he made his first ever TV commercial appearance on late-night Japanese TV, promoting the Uno brand of cosmetics maker Shiseido. A "one night only", 2-minute version of the Sci-Fi themed commercial kicked off the product's marketing campaign. In 2008 he signed on to play a small role in the British film "An Education" but dropped out to take the lead in Johnnie To's film "Red Circle". Also in 2009, he was one of many stars to appear in "New York, I Love You", which contained 12 short films in one.


title: Orlando Bloom

text: Bloom appeared in "The Three Musketeers" opposite Milla Jovovich, Logan Lerman, Matthew Macfadyen, Ray Stevenson, Luke Evans, Juno Temple and Christoph Waltz, released in 2011. Bloom reprised his role as Legolas in parts two and three of "The Hobbit", Peter Jackson's three-part prequel to "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. He made his Broadway stage debut as Romeo in "Romeo and Juliet" in August 2013 at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. "The New York Times" theatre critic Ben Brantley described Bloom's performance as "a first-rate Broadway debut" in the title role: "For once, we have a Romeo who evolves substantively, from a posturing youth in love with love, to a man who discovers the startling revelation of real love, with a last-act descent into bilious, bitter anger that verges on madness."


title: Orlando Bloom

text: In October 2011, Bloom stated that he would like to return for a fifth "Pirates of the Caribbean" film. Bloom did reprise his character, Will Turner, in a supporting role in the fifth film, "", which was released in May 2017.


title: Orlando Bloom

text: Bloom starred in the Trafalgar Studios production of "Killer Joe" in 2018. Bloom is currently starring in the Amazon Prime TV show "Carnival Row", which was filming its second season in Prague before temporarily postponing production due to COVID-19. Together with a number of his "Lord of the Rings" co-stars (plus writer Philippa Boyens and director Peter Jackson), on 1 June 2020 he joined Josh Gad's YouTube series "Reunited Apart" which reunites the cast of popular movies through video-conferencing, and promotes donations to non-profit charities.


title: Orlando Bloom

text: In July 2020, Bloom starred in the war film "The Outpost" in which he portrayed the character of captain Benjamin Keating.


title: Orlando Bloom

text: Bloom has said that he tries "not to exclude himself from real life as much as possible." During filming in Morocco for "Kingdom of Heaven", Bloom rescued and adopted a dog, Sidi (a black Saluki mix with a white mark on his chest).


title: Orlando Bloom

text: In 2004, he became a full member of SGI-UK (the UK branch of Soka Gakkai International), a lay Buddhist association affiliated with the teachings of Nichiren.


title: Orlando Bloom

text: Bloom has also been a part of Global Green, an environmental company, since the early 2000s. As part of his environmental involvement, he has renovated his London home to use solar panels, incorporate recycled materials, and use energy efficient lightbulbs. Bloom has been approached by UNICEF to act as an international ambassador.


title: Orlando Bloom

text: Involved in modelling work, in 2002 he starred opposite English actress Kate Beckinsale in a Gap television advertisement directed by Cameron Crowe.


title: Orlando Bloom

text: Bloom has a tattoo of the Elvish word "nine" on his right wrist, written in fictional Tengwar Elvish script, a reference to his involvement in "The Lord of the Rings" as one of the nine members of the Fellowship of the Ring. The other actors of "The Fellowship" (Sean Astin, Sean Bean, Billy Boyd, Ian McKellen, Dominic Monaghan, Viggo Mortensen, and Elijah Wood) got the same tattoo with the exception of John Rhys-Davies whose stunt double got the tattoo instead. Bloom also has a tattoo of a sun on his lower left abdomen, which he got at age 15 before moving to London.


title: Orlando Bloom

text: On 12 February 2009, Bloom actively participated in the 'Australia Unites' fundraiser to raise support for the victims of the Australian bushfires on 7 February 2009.


title: Orlando Bloom

text: On 12 October 2009, Bloom was named a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. He has been involved in the organisation since 2007 and has visited schools and villages in Nepal in support of sanitation and education programmes. Bloom also visited the city of Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine in April 2016 to raise awareness of the education crisis facing children during the Russo-Ukrainian war in 2014-2015.


title: Orlando Bloom

text: Bloom has sustained several injuries: he broke his left arm and cracked his skull three times, broke his nose while playing rugby union, broke his right leg skiing in Switzerland, broke his left leg in a motorbike crash, and broke his right wrist while snowboarding. He also broke his back when he slipped trying to reach a roof terrace of a friend's house and fell three floors. He also broke some ribs while shooting "The Lord of the Rings".


title: Orlando Bloom

text: On 13 July 2009, four hooded teenagers broke into the Hollywood Hills home of Bloom and stole nearly half a million dollars' worth of possessions. The burglars, dubbed the "Bling Ring," targeted the homes of young celebrities. Most of Bloom's stolen items were retrieved.


title: Orlando Bloom

text: Bloom had an "on-and-off relationship" with American actress Kate Bosworth, from 2003 until ending the relationship in September 2006.


title: Orlando Bloom

text: In late 2007, Bloom began dating Australian supermodel Miranda Kerr. They announced their engagement in June 2010, and were married the following month. Kerr gave birth to their son on 6 January 2011 in Los Angeles. On 25 October 2013, Bloom and Kerr announced that they had separated several months earlier, and intended to end their marriage. They were divorced by the end of 2013.


title: Orlando Bloom

text: Bloom began dating American singer and songwriter Katy Perry in January 2016; however, the couple confirmed in February 2017 that they had split. They resumed their relationship in February 2018, and became engaged on 14 February 2019. On 5 March 2020, it was revealed through the music video for Perry's song "Never Worn White" that the couple were expecting their first child together. Perry gave birth to their daughter on 26 August 2020.


title: Orlando Bloom

text: Bloom was named the twelfth most influential person in the UK in a 2004 poll of cultural experts conducted for the BBC. Bloom appeared in his home town of Canterbury on 13 July 2010 when he was presented with an honorary degree from the University of Kent at Canterbury Cathedral. For contributions to the film industry, Bloom was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame on 2 April 2014. His motion pictures walk of fame star is located at 6927 Hollywood Boulevard.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production and distribution company and the main namesake division of Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS). It is the fifth-oldest film studio in the world, the second-oldest film studio in the United States (behind Universal Pictures), and the sole member of the "Big Five" film studios located within the city limits of Los Angeles.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In 1916, film producer Adolph Zukor put 24 actors and actresses under contract and honored each with a star on the logo. In 1967, the number of stars was reduced to 22 and their hidden meaning was dropped. In 2014, Paramount Pictures became the first major Hollywood studio to distribute all of its films in digital form only. The company's headquarters and studios are located at 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, California.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Paramount is the fifth oldest surviving film studio in the world; after the French studios Gaumont Film Company (1895) and Pathé (1896), Titanus (1904), followed by the Nordisk Film company (1906), and Universal Studios (1912). It is the last major film studio still headquartered in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Paramount Pictures dates its existence from the 1912 founding date of the Famous Players Film Company. Hungarian-born founder Adolph Zukor, who had been an early investor in nickelodeons, saw that movies appealed mainly to working-class immigrants. With partners Daniel Frohman and Charles Frohman he planned to offer feature-length films that would appeal to the middle class by featuring the leading theatrical players of the time (leading to the slogan "Famous Players in Famous Plays"). By mid-1913, Famous Players had completed five films, and Zukor was on his way to success. Its first film was "Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth", which starred Sarah Bernhardt.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: That same year, another aspiring producer, Jesse L. Lasky, opened his Lasky Feature Play Company with money borrowed from his brother-in-law, Samuel Goldfish, later known as Samuel Goldwyn. The Lasky company hired as their first employee a stage director with virtually no film experience, Cecil B. DeMille, who would find a suitable site in Hollywood. This place was a rented old horse barn converted into a production facility with an enlarged open-air stage located between Vine Street, Selma Avenue, Argyle Avenue and Sunset Boulevard. It was later known as the Lasky-DeMille Barn. In 1914, their first feature film, "The Squaw Man" was released.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: On May 8, 1914, Paramount Pictures Corporation (previously known as Progressive Pictures) was founded by a Utah theatre owner, W. W. Hodkinson, who had bought and merged five smaller firms. On May 15, 1914, Hodkinson signed a five-year contract with the Famous Players Film Company, the Lasky Company and Bosworth, Inc. to distribute their films. Actor, director and producer Hobart Bosworth had started production of a series of Jack London movies. Paramount was the first successful nationwide distributor; until this time, films were sold on a statewide or regional basis which had proved costly to film producers. Also, Famous Players and Lasky were privately owned while Paramount was a corporation.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In 1916, Zukor engineered a three-way merger of his Famous Players, the Lasky Company, and Paramount. Zukor and Lasky bought Hodkinson out of Paramount, and merged the three companies into one. The new company Lasky and Zukor founded on June 28, Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, although it continued to use the name "Paramount" as well. As a result, it became he largest film company at the time with a value of $12.5 million. The corporation was able to grow quickly, with Lasky and his partners Goldwyn and DeMille running the production side, Hiram Abrams in charge of distribution, and Zukor making great plans. With only the exhibitor-owned First National as a rival, Famous Players-Lasky and its "Paramount Pictures" soon dominated the business. The fusion was finalized on November 7, 1916.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Because Zukor believed in stars, he signed and developed many of the leading early stars, including Mary Pickford, Marguerite Clark, Pauline Frederick, Douglas Fairbanks, Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino, and Wallace Reid. With so many important players, Paramount was able to introduce "block booking", which meant that an exhibitor who wanted a particular star's films had to buy a year's worth of other Paramount productions. It was this system that gave Paramount a leading position in the 1920s and 1930s, but which led the government to pursue it on antitrust grounds for more than twenty years.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: By the mid-1920s, the old Lasky-DeMille barn property was not big enough to handle all of the studios' West Coast productions. On January 5, 1926, Lasky reached an agreement to buy the Robert Brunton Studios, a 26-acre facility owned by United Pictures and located at 5451 Marathon Street, for US$1 million. On March 29, the company began an eight-month building program to renovate the existing facilities and erect new ones. On May 8, Lasky finally moved operations from the Sunset and Vine lot to the new building. At present, those facilities are still part of the Paramount Pictures headquarters. Zukor hired independent producer B. P. Schulberg, an unerring eye for new talent, to run the new West Coast operations.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: On April 1, 1927, the company name was changed to Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation. In September 1927, the Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation studio in Astoria (New York City) was temporarily closed with the objective of equipping it with the technology for the production of sound films. In the same year, Paramount began releasing "Inkwell Imps", animated cartoons produced by Max and Dave Fleischer's Fleischer Studios in New York City. The Fleischers, veterans in the animation industry, were among the few animation producers capable of challenging the prominence of Walt Disney. The Paramount newsreel series Paramount News ran from 1927 to 1957. Paramount was also one of the first Hollywood studios to release what were known at that time as "talkies", and in 1929, released their first musical, "Innocents of Paris". Richard A. Whiting and Leo Robin composed the score for the film; Maurice Chevalier starred and sang the most famous song from the film, "Louise".


title: Paramount Pictures

text: The driving force behind Paramount's rise was Zukor. He built a chain of nearly 2,000 screens, ran two production studios (in Astoria, New York, now the Kaufman Astoria Studios, and Hollywood, California), and became an early investor in radio, acquiring for the corporation a 50% interest in the new Columbia Broadcasting System in 1928 (selling it within a few years; this would not be the last time Paramount and CBS crossed paths).


title: Paramount Pictures

text: By acquiring the successful Balaban & Katz chain in 1926, Zukor gained the services of Barney Balaban (who would eventually become Paramount's president in 1936), his brother A. J. Balaban (who would eventually supervise all stage production nationwide and produce talkie shorts), and their partner Sam Katz (who would run the Paramount-Publix theatre chain in New York City from the thirty-five-story Paramount Theatre Building on Times Square).


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Balaban and Katz had developed the Wonder Theater concept, first publicized around 1918 in Chicago. The Chicago Theater was created as a very ornate theater and advertised as a "wonder theater". When Publix acquired Balaban, they embarked on a project to expand the wonder theaters, and starting building in New York City in 1927. While Balaban and Public were dominant in Chicago, Loew's was the big player in New York City, and did not want the Publix theaters to overshadow theirs. The two companies brokered a non-competition deal for New York City and Chicago, and Loew's took over the New York City area projects, developing five wonder theaters. Publix continued Balaban's wonder theater development in its home area.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Eventually, Zukor shed most of his early partners; the Frohman brothers, Hodkinson and Goldwyn were out by 1917 while Lasky hung on until 1932, when, blamed for the near-collapse of Paramount in the Great Depression years, he too was tossed out. In 1931, to solve the financial problems of the company Zukor hired taxi/rental car magnate John D. Hertz as chairman of the finance committee in order to assist vice-president and treasurer Ralph A. Kohn. However, on January 6, 1933, Hertz resigned from his position when it become evident that his measures to lift the company had failed. The over-expansion and use of overvalued Paramount stock for purchases created a $21 million debt which led the company into receivership on January 26, 1933 and later filing bankruptcy on March 14, 1933. On April 17, 1933, bankruptcy trustees were appointed and Zukor lost control of the company. The company remained under the control of trustees for more than a year in order to restructure the debt and pursue a reorganization plan. On December 3, 1934, the reorganization plan was formally proposed. After prolonged hearings in court, final confirmation was obtained on April 25, 1935, when Federal Judge Alfred C. Coxe Jr. approved the reorganization of the Paramount-Publix Corporation under Section 77-B of the Bankruptcy Act.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: On June 4, 1935 John E. Otterson became president of the re-emerged and newly renamed Paramount Pictures Inc. Zukor returned to the company and was named production chief but after Barney Balaban was appointed president on July 2, 1936, he was soon replaced by Y. Frank Freeman and symbolically named chairman of the board. On August 28, 1935, Paramount Pictures was re-listed on the New York Stock Exchange and after the company was under Balaban's leadership, the studio was successfully relauched.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: As always, Paramount films continued to emphasize stars; in the 1920s there were Gloria Swanson, Wallace Reid, Rudolph Valentino, Florence Vidor, Thomas Meighan, Pola Negri, Bebe Daniels, Antonio Moreno, Richard Dix, Esther Ralston, Emil Jannings, George Bancroft, Betty Compson, Clara Bow, Adolphe Menjou, and Charles Buddy Rogers. By the late 1920s and the early 1930s, talkies brought in a range of powerful draws: Richard Arlen, Nancy Carroll, Maurice Chevalier, Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Ruggles, Ruth Chatterton, William Powell, Mae West, Sylvia Sidney, Bing Crosby, Claudette Colbert, the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, Fredric March, Jack Oakie, Jeanette MacDonald (whose first two films were shot at Paramount's Astoria, New York, studio), Carole Lombard, George Raft, Miriam Hopkins, Cary Grant and Stuart Erwin, among them. In this period Paramount can truly be described as a movie factory, turning out sixty to seventy pictures a year. Such were the benefits of having a huge theater chain to fill, and of block booking to persuade other chains to go along. In 1933, Mae West would also add greatly to Paramount's success with her suggestive movies "She Done Him Wrong" and "I'm No Angel". However, the sex appeal West gave in these movies would also lead to the enforcement of the Production Code, as the newly formed organization the Catholic Legion of Decency threatened a boycott if it was not enforced.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Paramount cartoons produced by Fleischer Studios continued to be successful, with characters such as Betty Boop and Popeye the Sailor becoming widely successful. One Fleischer series, "Screen Songs", featured live-action music stars under contract to Paramount hosting sing-alongs of popular songs. The animation studio would rebound with Popeye, and in 1935, polls showed that Popeye was even more popular than Mickey Mouse. After an unsuccessful expansion into feature films, as well as the fact that Max and Dave Fleischer were no longer speaking to one another, Fleischer Studios was acquired by Paramount, which renamed the operation Famous Studios. That incarnation of the animation studio continued cartoon production until 1967, but has been historically dismissed as having largely failed to maintain the artistic acclaim the Fleischer brothers achieved under their management.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In 1940, Paramount agreed to a government-instituted consent decree: block booking and "pre-selling" (the practice of collecting up-front money for films not yet in production) would end. Immediately, Paramount cut back on production, from 71 films to a more modest 19 annually in the war years. Still, with more new stars like Bob Hope, Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Paulette Goddard, and Betty Hutton, and with war-time attendance at astronomical numbers, Paramount and the other integrated studio-theatre combines made more money than ever. At this, the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department decided to reopen their case against the five integrated studios. Paramount also had a monopoly over Detroit movie theaters through subsidiary company United Detroit Theaters. This led to the Supreme Court decision "United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc." (1948) holding that movie studios could not also own movie theater chains. This decision broke up Adolph Zukor's creation, with the theater chain being split into a new company, United Paramount Theaters, and effectively brought an end to the classic Hollywood studio system.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: With the separation of production and exhibition forced by the U.S. Supreme Court, Paramount Pictures Inc. was split in two. Paramount Pictures Corporation was formed to be the production distribution company, with the 1,500-screen theater chain handed to the new United Paramount Theaters on December 31, 1949. Leonard Goldenson, who had headed the chain since 1938, remained as the new company's president. The Balaban and Katz theatre division was spun off with UPT; its trademark eventually became the property of the Balaban and Katz Historical Foundation. The Foundation has recently acquired ownership of the Famous Players Trademark. Cash-rich and controlling prime downtown real estate, Goldenson began looking for investments. Barred from film-making by prior antitrust rulings, he acquired the struggling ABC television network in February 1953, leading it first to financial health, and eventually, in the mid-1970s, to first place in the national Nielsen ratings, before selling out to Capital Cities in 1985 (Capital Cities would eventually sell out, in turn, to The Walt Disney Company in 1996). United Paramount Theaters was renamed ABC Theaters in 1965 and was sold to businessman Henry Plitt in 1977. The movie theater chain was renamed Plitt Theaters. In 1985, Cineplex Odeon Corporation merged with Plitt. In later years, Paramount's TV division would develop a strong relationship with ABC, providing many hit series to the network.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Paramount Pictures had been an early backer of television, launching experimental stations in 1939 in Los Angeles and Chicago. The Los Angeles station eventually became KTLA, the first commercial station on the West Coast. The Chicago station got a commercial license as WBKB in 1943, but was sold to UPT along with Balaban & Katz in 1948 and was eventually resold to CBS as WBBM-TV.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In 1938, Paramount bought a stake in television manufacturer DuMont Laboratories. Through this stake, it became a minority owner of the DuMont Television Network. Also Paramount launched its own network, Paramount Television Network, in 1948 through its television unit, Television Productions, Inc.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Paramount management planned to acquire additional owned-and-operated stations ("O&Os"); the company applied to the FCC for additional stations in San Francisco, Detroit, and Boston. The FCC, however, denied Paramount's applications. A few years earlier, the federal regulator had placed a five-station cap on all television networks: no network was allowed to own more than five VHF television stations. Paramount was hampered by its minority stake in the DuMont Television Network. Although both DuMont and Paramount executives stated that the companies were separate, the FCC ruled that Paramount's partial ownership of DuMont meant that DuMont and Paramount were in theory branches of the same company. Since DuMont owned three television stations and Paramount owned two, the federal agency ruled neither network could acquire additional television stations. The FCC requested that Paramount relinquish its stake in DuMont, but Paramount refused. According to television historian William Boddy, "Paramount's checkered antitrust history" helped convince the FCC that Paramount controlled DuMont. Both DuMont and Paramount Television Network suffered as a result, with neither company able to acquire five O&Os. Meanwhile, CBS, ABC, and NBC had each acquired the maximum of five stations by the mid-1950s.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: When ABC accepted a merger offer from UPT in 1953, DuMont quickly realized that ABC now had more resources than it could possibly hope to match. It quickly reached an agreement in principle to merge with ABC. However, Paramount vetoed the offer due to antitrust concerns. For all intents and purposes, this was the end of DuMont, though it lingered on until 1956.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In 1951, Paramount bought a stake in International Telemeter, an experimental pay TV service which operated with a coin inserted into a box. The service began operating in Palm Springs, California on November 27, 1953, but due to pressure from the FCC, the service ended on May 15, 1954.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: With the loss of the theater chain, Paramount Pictures went into a decline, cutting studio-backed production, releasing its contract players, and making production deals with independents. By the mid-1950s, all the great names were gone; only Cecil B. DeMille, associated with Paramount since 1913, kept making pictures in the grand old style. Despite Paramount's losses, DeMille would, however, give the studio some relief and create his most successful film at Paramount, a 1956 remake of his 1923 film "The Ten Commandments". DeMille died in 1959. Like some other studios, Paramount saw little value in its film library, and sold 764 of its pre-1950 films to MCA Inc./EMKA, Ltd. (known today as Universal Television) in February 1958.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: By the early 1960s, Paramount's future was doubtful. The high-risk movie business was wobbly; the theater chain was long gone; investments in DuMont and in early pay-television came to nothing; and the Golden Age of Hollywood had just ended, even the flagship Paramount Building in Times Square was sold to raise cash, as was KTLA (sold to Gene Autry in 1964 for a then-phenomenal $12.5 million). Their only remaining successful property at that point was Dot Records, which Paramount had acquired in 1957, and even its profits started declining by the middle of the 1960s. Founding father Adolph Zukor (born in 1873) was still chairman emeritus; he referred to chairman Barney Balaban (born 1888) as "the boy". Such aged leadership was incapable of keeping up with the changing times, and in 1966, a sinking Paramount was sold to Charles Bluhdorn's industrial conglomerate, Gulf + Western Industries Corporation. Bluhdorn immediately put his stamp on the studio, installing a virtually unknown producer named Robert Evans as head of production. Despite some rough times, Evans held the job for eight years, restoring Paramount's reputation for commercial success with "The Odd Couple", "Rosemary's Baby", "Love Story", "The Godfather", "Chinatown", and "3 Days of the Condor".


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Gulf + Western Industries also bought the neighboring Desilu television studio (once the lot of RKO Pictures) from Lucille Ball in 1967. Using some of Desilu's established shows such as "", "", and "Mannix" as a foot in the door at the networks, the newly reincorporated Paramount Television eventually became known as a specialist in half-hour situation comedies.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In 1968, Paramount formed Films Distributing Corp to distribute sensitive film product, including "Sin With a Stranger", which was one of the first films to receive an X rating in the United States when the MPAA introduced their new rating system.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In 1970, Paramount teamed with Universal Studios to form Cinema International Corporation, a new company that would distribute films by the two studios outside the United States. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer would become a partner in the mid-1970s. Both Paramount and CIC entered the video market with Paramount Home Video (now Paramount Home Entertainment) and CIC Video, respectively.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Robert Evans abandoned his position as head of production in 1974; his successor, Richard Sylbert, proved to be too literary and too tasteful for Gulf + Western's Bluhdorn. By 1976, a new, television-trained team was in place headed by Barry Diller and his "Killer-Dillers", as they were called by admirers or "Dillettes" as they were called by detractors. These associates, made up of Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Dawn Steel and Don Simpson would each go on and head up major movie studios of their own later in their careers.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: The Paramount specialty was now simpler. "high concept" pictures such as "Saturday Night Fever" and "Grease" hit big, hit hard and hit fast all over the world, while its fortuitous earlier acquisition of the "Star Trek" property, which had grown into a cult favorite, enabled Paramount to have a long running science fiction film and television franchise to compete with the outstanding popular success of "Star Wars". Diller's television background led him to propose one of his longest-standing ideas to the board: Paramount Television Service, a fourth commercial network. Paramount Pictures purchased the Hughes Television Network (HTN) including its satellite time in planning for PTVS in 1976. Paramount sold HTN to Madison Square Garden in 1979. But Diller believed strongly in the concept, and so took his fourth-network idea with him when he moved to 20th Century Fox in 1984, where Fox's then freshly installed proprietor, Rupert Murdoch was a more interested listener.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: However, the television division would be playing catch-up for over a decade after Diller's departure in 1984 before launching its own television network – UPN – in 1995. Lasting eleven years before being merged with The WB network to become The CW in 2006, UPN would feature many of the shows it originally produced for other networks, and would take numerous gambles on series such as "" and "" that would have otherwise either gone direct-to-cable or become first-run syndication to independent stations across the country (as "" and "" were).


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Paramount Pictures was not connected to either Paramount Records (1910s–1935) or ABC-Paramount Records (1955–66) until it purchased the rights to use the name (but not the latter's catalog) in the late 1960s. The Paramount name was used for soundtrack albums and some pop re-issues from the Dot Records catalog which Paramount had acquired in 1957. By 1970, Dot had become an all-country label and in 1974, Paramount sold all of its record holdings to ABC Records, which in turn was sold to MCA (now Universal Music Group) in 1979.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Paramount's successful run of pictures extended into the 1980s and 1990s, generating hits like "Airplane!", "American Gigolo", "Ordinary People", "An Officer and a Gentleman", "Flashdance", "Terms of Endearment", "Footloose", "Pretty in Pink", "Top Gun", "Crocodile Dundee", "Fatal Attraction", "Ghost", the "Friday the 13th" slasher series, as well as teaming up with Lucasfilm to create the "Indiana Jones" franchise. Other examples are the "Star Trek" film series and a string of films starring comedian Eddie Murphy like "Trading Places", "Coming to America" and "Beverly Hills Cop" and its sequels. While the emphasis was decidedly on the commercial, there were occasional less commercial but more artistic and intellectual efforts like "I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can", "Atlantic City", "Reds", "Witness", "Children of a Lesser God" and "The Accused". During this period, responsibility for running the studio passed from Eisner and Katzenberg to Frank Mancuso, Sr. (1984) and Ned Tanen (1984) to Stanley R. Jaffe (1991) and Sherry Lansing (1992). More so than most, Paramount's slate of films included many remakes and television spin-offs; while sometimes commercially successful, there have been few compelling films of the kind that once made Paramount the industry leader.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: On August 25, 1983, Paramount Studios caught fire. Two or three sound stages and four outdoor sets were destroyed.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: When Charles Bluhdorn died unexpectedly, his successor Martin Davis dumped all of G+W's industrial, mining, and sugar-growing subsidiaries and refocused the company, renaming it Paramount Communications in 1989. With the influx of cash from the sale of G+W's industrial properties in the mid-1980s, Paramount bought a string of television stations and KECO Entertainment's theme park operations, renaming them Paramount Parks. These parks included Paramount's Great America, Paramount Canada's Wonderland, Paramount's Carowinds, Paramount's Kings Dominion, and Paramount's Kings Island.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In May 1985, Paramount decided to start its own talent department, establishing which its feature directors could draw, which the studio decided to shut down on July 30, 1986, by then-studio president Dawn Steel. In 1987, Paramount Pictures, along with MGM/UA Communications Co. and Universal Pictures teamed up in order to market feature film and television product to China, and the consumer reach is measured in terms of the 25-billion admission tickets that were clocked in China in 1986, and Worldwide Media Sales, a division of the New York-based Worldwide Media Group had been placed in charge of the undertaking. That year, Paramount Pictures decided to consolidate its distribution operations, that closing a number of branch offices that was designed for the studio and relocating staff and major activities in an effort to cut costs and provide for a more efficient centralization, which was a response in a change to the distribution practices by working out cities where exhibitors also had offices. In August 1987, Paramount Overseas Productions decided that they would declare that the subsidiary was not just for the upcoming film "Experts", which was shot $12 million in Canada, but other films filmed there worldwide, including the United Kingdom and Canada, and the company was set up it was one of the several subsidiaries through it was filmed outside of the United States.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In 1993, Sumner Redstone's entertainment conglomerate Viacom made a bid for a merger with Paramount Communications; this quickly escalated into a bidding war with Barry Diller's QVC. But Viacom prevailed, ultimately paying $10 billion for the Paramount holdings. Viacom and Paramount had planned to merge as early as 1989.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Paramount is the last major film studio located in Hollywood proper. When Paramount moved to its present home in 1927, it was in the heart of the film community. Since then, former next-door neighbor RKO closed up shop in 1957 (Paramount ultimately absorbed their former lot); Warner Bros. (whose old Sunset Boulevard studio was sold to Paramount in 1949 as a home for KTLA) moved to Burbank in 1930; Columbia joined Warners in Burbank in 1973 then moved again to Culver City in 1989; and the Pickford-Fairbanks-Goldwyn-United Artists lot, after a lively history, has been turned into a post-production and music-scoring facility for Warners, known simply as "The Lot". For a time the semi-industrial neighborhood around Paramount was in decline, but has now come back. The recently refurbished studio has come to symbolize Hollywood for many visitors, and its studio tour is a popular attraction.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In 1983, Gulf and Western began a restructuring process that would transform the corporation from a bloated conglomerate consisting of subsidiaries from unrelated industries to a more focused entertainment and publishing company. The idea was to aid financial markets in measuring the company's success, which, in turn, would help place better value on its shares. Though its Paramount division did very well in recent years, Gulf and Western's success as a whole was translating poorly with investors. This process eventually led Davis to divest many of the company's subsidiaries. Its sugar plantations in Florida and the Dominican Republic were sold in 1985; the consumer and industrial products branch was sold off that same year. In 1989, Davis renamed the company Paramount Communications Incorporated after its primary asset, Paramount Pictures. In addition to the Paramount film, television, home video, and music publishing divisions, the company continued to own the Madison Square Garden properties (which also included MSG Network), a 50% stake in USA Networks (the other 50% was owned by MCA/Universal Studios) and Simon & Schuster, Prentice Hall, Pocket Books, Allyn & Bacon, Cineamerica (a joint venture with Warner Communications), and Canadian cinema chain Famous Players Theatres.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: That same year, the company launched a $12.2 billion hostile bid to acquire Time Inc. in an attempt to end a stock-swap merger deal between Time and Warner Communications. This caused Time to raise its bid for Warner to $14.9 billion in cash and stock. Gulf and Western responded by filing a lawsuit in a Delaware court to block the Time-Warner merger. The court ruled twice in favor of Time, forcing Gulf and Western to drop both the Time acquisition and the lawsuit, and allowing the formation of Time Warner.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Paramount used cash acquired from the sale of Gulf and Western's non-entertainment properties to take over the TVX Broadcast Group chain of television stations (which at that point consisted mainly of large-market stations which TVX had bought from Taft Broadcasting, plus two mid-market stations which TVX owned prior to the Taft purchase), and the KECO Entertainment chain of theme parks from Taft successor Great American Broadcasting. Both of these companies had their names changed to reflect new ownership: TVX became known as the Paramount Stations Group, while KECO was renamed to Paramount Parks.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Paramount Television launched Wilshire Court Productions in conjunction with USA Networks, before the latter was renamed NBCUniversal Cable, in 1989. Wilshire Court Productions (named for a side street in Los Angeles) produced television films that aired on the USA Networks, and later for other networks. USA Networks launched a second channel, the Sci-Fi Channel (now known as Syfy), in 1992. As its name implied, it focused on films and television series within the science fiction genre. Much of the initial programming was owned either by Paramount or Universal. Paramount bought one more television station in 1993: Cox Enterprises' WKBD-TV in Detroit, Michigan, at the time an affiliate of the Fox Broadcasting Company.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In February 1994, Viacom acquired 50.1% of Paramount Communications Inc. shares for $9.75 billion, following a five-month battle with QVC, and completed the merger in July. At the time, Paramount's holdings included Paramount Pictures, Madison Square Garden, the New York Rangers, the New York Knicks, and the Simon & Schuster publishing house. The deal had been planned as early as 1989, when the company was still known as Gulf and Western. Though Davis was named a member of the board of National Amusements, which controlled Viacom, he ceased to manage the company.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Under Viacom, the Paramount Stations Group continued to build with more station acquisitions, eventually leading to Viacom's acquisition of its former parent, the CBS network, in 1999. Around the same time, Viacom bought out Spelling Entertainment, incorporating its library into that of Paramount itself.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Viacom split into two companies in 2006, one retaining the Viacom name (which continued to own Paramount Pictures), while another was named CBS Corporation (which now controlled Paramount Television Group, which was renamed CBS Paramount Television, now known as CBS Television Studios and worldwide distribution unit is now CBS Television Distribution and CBS Studios International, in 2006, Simon & Schuster (except for Prentice Hall and other educational units, which Viacom sold to Pearson PLC in 1998), and what's left of the original Paramount Stations Group, now known as CBS Television Stations). National Amusements retains majority control of the two.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Together, these two companies own many of the former media assets of Gulf and Western and its Paramount successor today. Meanwhile, the Madison Square Garden properties (including Madison Square Gardens, the MSG Network, Knicks and Rangers) were sold to Cablevision for $1.075 billion not long after the Viacom takeover. CBS retained ownership of the Paramount Parks chain for a few months after becoming part of the new CBS Corporation, but sold the parks to Cedar Fair in the summer of 2006, and thus National Amusements got out of the theme park ownership business entirely. Over the next few years, Cedar Fair purged references to Viacom-owned properties from the former Paramount Parks, a task completed in 2010. Viacom also sold its stake in the USA Networks to Universal in 1997, and the channels came under the ownership of Universal's successor, NBCUniversal, which still retained those holdings as of late July 2013.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: During this time period, Paramount Pictures went under the guidance of Jonathan Dolgen, chairman and Sherry Lansing, president. During their administration over Paramount, the studio had an extremely successful period of films with two of Paramount's ten highest-grossing films being produced during this period. The most successful of these films, "Titanic", a joint partnership with 20th Century Fox, and Lightstorm Entertainment became the highest-grossing film up to that time, grossing over $1.8 billion worldwide. Also during this time, three Paramount Pictures films won the Academy Award for Best Picture; "Titanic, Braveheart", and "Forrest Gump".


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Paramount's most important property, however, was "Star Trek". Studio executives had begun to call it "the franchise" in the 1980s due to its reliable revenue, and other studios envied its "untouchable and unduplicatable" success. By 1998 "Star Trek" television shows, movies, books, videotapes, and licensing provided so much of the studio's profit that "it is not possible to spend any reasonable amount of time at Paramount and not be aware of [its] presence"; filming for "Star Trek: Voyager" and "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" required up to nine of the largest of the studio's 36 sound stages.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In 1995, Viacom and Chris-Craft Industries' United Television launched United Paramount Network (UPN) with "Star Trek: Voyager" as its flagship series, fulfilling Barry Diller's plan for a Paramount network from 25 years earlier. In 1999, Viacom bought out United Television's interests, and handed responsibility for the start-up network to the newly acquired CBS unit, which Viacom bought in 1999 – an ironic confluence of events as Paramount had once invested in CBS, and Viacom had once been the syndication arm of CBS as well. During this period the studio acquired some 30 TV stations to support the UPN network as well acquiring and merging in the assets of Republic Pictures, Spelling Television and Viacom Television, almost doubling the size of the studio's television library. The television division produced the dominant prime time show for the decade in "Frasier" as well as such long running hits as "NCIS" and "Becker" and the dominant prime time magazine show "Entertainment Tonight." Paramount also gained the ownership rights to the Rysher library, after Viacom acquired the rights from Cox Enterprises.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: During this period, Paramount and its related subsidiaries and affiliates, operating under the name "Viacom Entertainment Group" also included the fourth largest group of theme parks in the United States and Canada which in addition to traditional rides and attractions launched numerous successful location-based entertainment units including a long running "Star Trek" attraction at the Las Vegas Hilton. Famous Music – the company's celebrated music publishing arm almost doubled in size and developed artists including Pink, Bush, Green Day as well as catalog favorites including Duke Ellington and Henry Mancini. The Paramount/Viacom licensing group under the leadership of Tom McGrath created the "Cheers" franchise bars and restaurants and a chain of restaurants borrowing from the studio's Academy Award-winning film "Forrest Gump" – "The Bubba Gump Shrimp Company". Through the combined efforts of Famous Music and the studio over ten "Broadway" musicals were created including Irving Berlin's "White Christmas", "Footloose, Saturday Night Fever", Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Sunset Boulevard" among others. The company's international arm, United International Pictures (UIP), was the dominant distributor internationally for ten straight years representing Paramount, Universal and MGM. Simon and Schuster became part of the Viacom Entertainment Group emerging as the US' dominant trade book publisher.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In 2002, Paramount; along with Buena Vista Distribution, 20th Century Fox, Columbia TriStar Pictures Entertainment, MGM/UA Entertainment, Universal Studios, DreamWorks Pictures, Artisan Entertainment, Lions Gate Entertainment, and Warner Bros. formed the Digital Cinema Initiatives. Operating under a waiver from the antitrust law, the studios combined under the leadership of Paramount Chief Operating Officer Tom McGrath to develop technical standards for the eventual introduction of digital film projection – replacing the now 100-year-old film technology. DCI was created "to establish and document voluntary specifications for an open architecture for digital cinema that ensures a uniform and high level of technical performance, reliability and quality control." McGrath also headed up Paramount's initiative for the creation and launch of the Blu-ray Disc.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Reflecting in part the troubles of the broadcasting business, in 2006 Viacom wrote off over $18 billion from its radio acquisitions and, early that year, announced that it would split itself in two. The split was completed in January 2006.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: With the announcement of the split of Viacom, Dolgen and Lansing were replaced by former television executives Brad Grey and Gail Berman. The Viacom Inc. board split the company into CBS Corporation and a separate company under the Viacom name. The board scheduled the division for the first quarter of 2006. Under the plan, CBS Corporation would comprise the CBS and UPN networks, Viacom Television Stations, Infinity Broadcasting Corporation, Viacom Outdoor, Paramount Television, King World Productions, Showtime Networks, Simon & Schuster, Paramount Parks, and CBS News. The revamped Viacom would include "MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, BET and several other cable networks as well as the Paramount movie studio". Paramount's home entertainment unit continues to distribute the Paramount Television library through CBS DVD, as both Viacom and CBS Corporation were controlled by Sumner Redstone's National Amusements.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In 2009, CBS stopped using the Paramount name in its series and changed the name of the production arm to CBS Television Studios, eliminating the Paramount name from television, to distance itself from the latter.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: On December 11, 2005, the Paramount Motion Pictures Group announced that it had purchased DreamWorks SKG (which was co-founded by former Paramount executive Jeffrey Katzenberg) in a deal worth $1.6 billion. The announcement was made by Brad Grey, chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures who noted that enhancing Paramount's pipeline of pictures is a "key strategic objective in restoring Paramount's stature as a leader in filmed entertainment." The agreement does not include DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc., the most profitable part of the company that went public the previous year.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Grey also broke up the famous United International Pictures (UIP) international distribution company with 15 countries being taken over by Paramount or Universal by December 31, 2006, with the joint venture continuing in 20 markets. In Australia, Brazil, France, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand and the U.K., Paramount took over UIP. While in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain and Switzerland, Universal took over and Paramount would build its own distribution operations there. In 2007 and 2008, Paramount may sub-distribute films via Universal's countries and vice versa. Paramount's international distribution unit would be headquartered in Los Angeles and have a European hub. In Italy, Paramount distributed through Universal. With Universal indicated that it was pulling out of the UIP Korea and started its own operation there in November 2016, Paramount agreed to have CJ Entertainment distribute there. UIP president and chief operating officer Andrew Cripps was hired as Paramount Pictures International head. Paramount Pictures International distributed films that made the 1 billion mark in July 2007; the fifth studio that year to do so and it its first year.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: On October 6, 2008, DreamWorks executives announced that they were leaving Paramount and relaunching an independent DreamWorks. The DreamWorks trademarks remained with DreamWorks Animation when that company was spun off before the Paramount purchase, and DreamWorks Animation transferred the license to the name to the new company.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: DreamWorks films, acquired by Paramount but still distributed internationally by Universal, are included in Paramount's market share. Grey also launched a Digital Entertainment division to take advantage of emerging digital distribution technologies. This led to Paramount becoming the second movie studio to sign a deal with Apple Inc. to sell its films through the iTunes Store.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Also, in 2007, Paramount sold another one of its "heritage" units, Famous Music, to Sony/ATV Music Publishing (best known for publishing many songs by The Beatles, and for being co-owned by Michael Jackson), ending a nearly-eight-decade run as a division of Paramount, being the studio's music publishing arm since the period when the entire company went by the name "Famous Players".


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In early 2008, Paramount partnered with Los Angeles-based developer FanRocket to make short scenes taken from its film library available to users on Facebook. The application, called VooZoo, allows users to send movie clips to other Facebook users and to post clips on their profile pages. Paramount engineered a similar deal with Makena Technologies to allow users of vMTV and There.com to view and send movie clips.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In March 2010, Paramount founded Insurge Pictures, an independent distributor of "micro budget" films. The distributor planned ten movies with budgets of $100,000 each. The first release was "The Devil Inside", a movie with a budget of about US$1 million. In March 2015, following waning box office returns, Paramount shuttered Insurge Pictures and moved its operations to the main studio.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In July 2011, in the wake of critical and box office success of the animated feature, "Rango", and the departure of DreamWorks Animation upon completion of their distribution contract in 2012, Paramount announced the formation of a new division, devoted to the creation of animated productions. It marks Paramount's return to having its own animated division for the first time since 1967, when Paramount Cartoon Studios shut down (it was formerly Famous Studios until 1956).


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In December 2013, Walt Disney Studios (via its parent company's purchase of Lucasfilm a year earlier) gained Paramount's remaining distribution and marketing rights to future "Indiana Jones" films. Paramount will permanently retain the distribution rights to the first four films and will receive "financial participation" from any additional films.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In February 2016, Viacom CEO and newly appointed chairman Philippe Dauman announced that the conglomerate is in talks to find an investor to purchase a minority stake in Paramount. Sumner Redstone and his daughter Shari are reportedly opposed with the deal. On July 13, 2016, Wanda Group was in talks to acquire a 49% stake of Paramount. The talks with Wanda were dropped. On January 19, 2017, Shanghai Film Group Corp. and Huahua Media said they would finance at least 25% of all Paramount Pictures movies over a three-year period. Shanghai Film Group and Huahua Media, in the deal, would help distribute and market Paramount's features in China. At the time, the "Wall Street Journal" wrote that "nearly every major Hollywood studio has a co-financing deal with a Chinese company."


title: Paramount Pictures

text: On March 27, 2017, Jim Gianopulos was named as a chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures, replacing Brad Grey.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In June 2017, Paramount Players was formed by the studio with the hiring of Brian Robbins, founder of AwesomenessTV, Tollin/Robbins Productions and Varsity Pictures, as the division's president. The division was expected to produce films based on the Viacom Media Networks properties including MTV, Nickelodeon, BET and Comedy Central. In June 2017, Paramount Pictures signed a deal with 20th Century Fox for distribution of its films in Italy, which took effect on September. Prior to the deal, Paramount's films in Italy were distributed by Universal Pictures.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: On December 7, 2017, it was reported that Paramount sold the international distribution rights of "Annihilation" to Netflix. Netflix subsequently bought the worldwide rights to "The Cloverfield Paradox" for $50 million. On November 16, 2018, Paramount signed a multi-picture film deal with Netflix as part of Viacom's growth strategy, making Paramount the first major film studio to do so. A sequel to Awesomeness Films' "To All the Boys I've Loved Before" is currently in development at the studio for Netflix.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In April 2018, Paramount posted its first quarterly profit since 2015. Bob Bakish, CEO of parent Viacom, said in a statement that turnaround efforts "have firmly taken hold as the studio improved margins and returned to profitability. This month's outstanding box-office performance of "A Quiet Place", the first film produced and released under the new team at Paramount, is a clear sign of our progress."


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In January 2022, Paramount Pictures acquired the rights to Tomi Adeyemi's young adult fantasy novel "Children of Blood and Bone" from Lucasfilm. As part of the acquisition, the film will have a guaranteed exclusive theatrical release while Adeyemi will write the screenplay and serve as executive producer. The film adaptation will also be produced by Temple Hill Entertainment and Sunswept Entertainment.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: On March 8, 2022, Paramount Players' operations were folded into Paramount Pictures Motion Picture Group. However, it will continue to operate as a label as it has several upcoming films on its slate.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: On November 15, 2022, Paramount entered a multi-year exclusive deal with former president of DC Films Walter Hamada. Hamada will oversee the development of horror films beginning in 2023.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: On September 29, 2016, National Amusements sent a letter to both CBS Corporation and Viacom, encouraging the two companies to re-merge back into one company. On December 12, the deal was called off. On May 30, 2019, CNBC reported that CBS and Viacom would explore merger discussions in mid-June 2019. Reports say that CBS and Viacom reportedly set August 8 as an informal deadline for reaching an agreement to recombine the two media companies. CBS announced to acquire Viacom as part of the re-merger for up to $15.4 billion. On August 2, 2019, the two companies agreed to remerge back into one entity, which was named ViacomCBS; the deal was closed on December 4, 2019.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In December 2019, ViacomCBS agreed to purchase a 49% stake in Miramax that was owned by beIN Media Group, with Paramount gaining the distribution of the studio's 700-film library as well as its future releases. Also, Paramount will produce television series based on Miramax's IPs. The deal officially closed on April 3, 2020. ViacomCBS later announced that it would rebrand the CBS All Access streaming service as Paramount+ to allow for international expansion using the widely recognized Paramount name and drawing from the studio's library as well as that of CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, and more.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In 2006, Paramount became the parent of DreamWorks Pictures. Soros Strategic Partners and Dune Entertainment II soon afterwards acquired controlling interest in live-action films released through DreamWorks, with the release of "Just Like Heaven" on September 16, 2005. The remaining live-action films released until March 2006 remained under direct Paramount control. However, Paramount still owns distribution and other ancillary rights to Soros and Dune films.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: On February 8, 2010, Viacom repurchased Soros' controlling stake in DreamWorks' library of films released before 2005 for around $400 million. Even as DreamWorks switched distribution of live-action films not part of existing franchises to Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and later Universal Pictures, Paramount continues to own the films released before the merger, and the films that Paramount themselves distributed, including sequel rights such as that of "Little Fockers" (2010), distributed by Paramount and DreamWorks. It was a sequel to two existing DreamWorks films, "Meet the Parents" (2000) and "Meet the Fockers" (2004). (Paramount only owned the international distribution rights to "Little Fockers", whereas Universal Pictures handled domestic distribution).


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Paramount also owned distribution rights to the DreamWorks Animation library of films made before 2013, and their previous distribution deal with future DWA titles expired at the end of 2012, with "Rise of the Guardians". 20th Century Fox took over distribution for post-2012 titles beginning with "The Croods" (2013) and ending with "" (2017). Universal Pictures subsequently took over distribution for DreamWorks Animation's films beginning with "" (2019) due to NBCUniversal's acquisition of the company in 2016. Paramount's rights to the 1998–2012 DWA library would have expired 16 years after each film's initial theatrical release date, but in July 2014, DreamWorks Animation purchased Paramount's distribution rights to the pre-2013 library, with 20th Century Fox distributing the library until January 2018, which Universal then assumed ownership of distribution rights.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Another asset of the former DreamWorks owned by Paramount is the pre-2008 DreamWorks Television library, which is currently distributed by Paramount's sister company CBS Media Ventures; it includes "Spin City", "High Incident", "Freaks and Geeks", "Undeclared" and "On the Lot".


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Independent company Hollywood Classics represents Paramount with the theatrical distribution of all the films produced by the various motion picture divisions of CBS over the years, as a result of the Viacom/CBS merger.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Paramount has outright video distribution to the aforementioned CBS library with some exceptions; less-demanded content is usually released manufactured-on-demand by CBS themselves or licensed to Visual Entertainment Inc. As of the 2019 Viacom/CBS merger, this library now includes the theatrical distribution of Terrytoons short films on behalf of Paramount Animation, while CBS Media Ventures owns the television distribution. Until 2009, the video rights to "My Fair Lady" were with original theatrical distributor Warner Bros., under license from CBS (the video license to that film has now reverted to Paramount).


title: Paramount Pictures

text: In March 2012, Paramount licensed their name and logo to a luxury hotel investment group which subsequently named the company Paramount Hotels and Resorts. The investors plan to build 50 hotels throughout the world based on the themes of Hollywood and the California lifestyle. Among the features are private screening rooms and the Paramount library available in the hotel rooms. In April 2013, Paramount Hotels and Dubai-based DAMAC Properties announced the building of the first resort: "DAMAC Towers by Paramount."


title: Paramount Pictures

text: The distinctively pyramidal Paramount mountain has been the mainstay of the company's production logo since its inception and is the oldest surviving Hollywood film logo. In the sound era, the logo was accompanied by a fanfare called "Paramount on Parade" after the film of the same name, released in 1930. The words to the fanfare, originally sung in the 1930 film, were "Proud of the crowd that will never be loud, it's Paramount on Parade."


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Legend has it that the mountain is based on a doodle made by W. W. Hodkinson during a meeting with Adolph Zukor. It is said to be based on the memories of his childhood in Utah. Some claim that Utah's Ben Lomond is the mountain Hodkinson doodled, and that Peru's Artesonraju is the mountain in the live-action logo, while others claim that the Italian side of Monviso inspired the logo. Some editions of the logo bear a striking resemblance to the Pfeifferhorn, another Wasatch Range peak, and to the Matterhorn on the border between Switzerland and Italy. Mount Huntington in Alaska also bears a striking resemblance.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: Paramount Studios offers tours of their studios. The 2-hour Studio Tour offers, as the name implies, a regular tour of the studio. The stages where "Samson and Delilah", "Sunset Blvd.", "White Christmas", "Rear Window", "Sabrina", "Breakfast at Tiffany's", and many other classic films were shot are still in use today. The studio's backlot features numerous blocks of façades that depict a number of New York City locales, such as "Washington Square", "Brooklyn", and "Financial District". The After Dark Tour involves a tour of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: A few years after the ruling of the "United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc." case in 1948, Music Corporation of America (MCA) approached Paramount offering $50 million for 750 sound feature films released prior to December 1, 1949, with payment to be spread over a period of several years. Paramount saw this as a bargain since the fleeting movie studio saw very little value in its library of old films at the time. To address any antitrust concerns, MCA set up EMKA, Ltd. as a dummy corporation to sell these films to television. EMKA's/Universal Television's library includes the five Paramount Marx Brothers films, most of the Bob Hope–Bing Crosby "Road to..." pictures, and other classics such as "Trouble in Paradise", "Shanghai Express", "She Done Him Wrong", "Sullivan's Travels", "The Palm Beach Story", "For Whom the Bell Tolls", "Double Indemnity", "The Lost Weekend", and "The Heiress".


title: Paramount Pictures

text: The studio has produced many critically acclaimed films such as "Titanic", "Footloose", "Breakfast at Tiffany's", "Braveheart", "Ghost", "The Truman Show", "Mean Girls", "Psycho", "Rocketman", "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", "Days of Thunder", "Rosemary's Baby", "Sunset Boulevard", "Forrest Gump", "Coming to America", "World War Z", "Babel", "The Conversation", "The Fighter", "Interstellar", "Terms of Endearment", "The Wolf of Wall Street" and "A Quiet Place"; as well as the "Godfather", "Star Trek", and "" film series.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: On July 31, 2018, Paramount was targeted by the National Hispanic Media Coalition and the National Latino Media Council, which have both claimed that the studio has the worst track record of hiring Latino and Hispanic talent both in front of and behind the camera (the last Paramount film directed by a Spanish director was "Rings" in 2017). In response to the controversy, Paramount released the statement: "We recently met with NHMC in a good faith effort to see how we could partner as we further drive Paramount's culture of diversity, inclusion, and belonging. Under our new leadership team, we continue to make progress — including ensuring representation in front of and behind the camera in upcoming films such as "Dora the Explorer", "Instant Family", "Bumblebee", and "Limited Partners" – and welcome the opportunity to build and strengthen relationships with the Latino creative community further."


title: Paramount Pictures

text: The NHMC protested at the Paramount Pictures lot on August 25. More than 60 protesters attended, while chanting "Latinos excluded, time to be included!". NHMC president and CEO Alex Nogales vowed to continue the boycott until the studio signed a memorandum of understanding.


title: Paramount Pictures

text: On October 17, the NHMC protested at the Paramount film lot for the second time in two months, with 75 protesters attending. The leaders delivered a petition signed by 12,307 people and addressed it to Jim Gianopulos.


title: The Shawshank Redemption

text: The Shawshank Redemption is a 1994 American drama film written and directed by Frank Darabont, based on the 1982 Stephen King novella "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption". It tells the story of banker Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), who is sentenced to life in Shawshank State Penitentiary for the murders of his wife and her lover, despite his claims of innocence. Over the following two decades, he befriends a fellow prisoner, contraband smuggler Ellis "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman), and becomes instrumental in a money-laundering operation led by the prison warden Samuel Norton (Bob Gunton). William Sadler, Clancy Brown, Gil Bellows, and James Whitmore appear in supporting roles.


title: The Shawshank Redemption

text: Darabont purchased the film rights to King's story in 1987, but development did not begin until five years later, when he wrote the script over an eight-week period. Two weeks after submitting his script to Castle Rock Entertainment, Darabont secured a $25 million budget to produce "The Shawshank Redemption", which started pre-production in January 1993. While the film is set in Maine, principal photography took place from June to August 1993 almost entirely in Mansfield, Ohio, with the Ohio State Reformatory serving as the eponymous penitentiary. The project attracted many stars of the time for the role of Andy, including Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, and Kevin Costner. Thomas Newman provided the film's score.


title: The Shawshank Redemption

text: While "The Shawshank Redemption" received critical acclaim on its release, particularly for its story and the performances of Robbins and Freeman, it was a box-office disappointment, earning only $16 million during its initial theatrical run. Many reasons were cited for its failure at the time, including competition from films such as "Pulp Fiction" and "Forrest Gump", the general unpopularity of prison films, its lack of female characters, and even the title, which was considered to be confusing for audiences. It went on to receive multiple award nominations, including seven Academy Award nominations, and a theatrical re-release that, combined with international takings, increased the film's box-office gross to $73.3 million.


title: The Shawshank Redemption

text: Over 320,000 VHS rental copies were shipped throughout the United States, and on the strength of its award nominations and word of mouth, it became one of the top video rentals of 1995. The broadcast rights were acquired following the purchase of Castle Rock by Turner Broadcasting System, and it was shown regularly on the TNT network starting in 1997, further increasing its popularity. Decades after its release, the film was still broadcast regularly, and is popular in several countries, with audience members and celebrities citing it as a source of inspiration or naming it a favorite in various surveys, leading to its recognition as one of the most "beloved" films ever made. In 2015, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".


title: The Shawshank Redemption

text: In 1947, Portland, Maine, banker Andy Dufresne is convicted of murdering his wife and her lover and is sentenced to two consecutive life sentences at the Shawshank State Prison. He is befriended by Ellis "Red" Redding, an inmate and prison contraband smuggler serving a life sentence, who procures a rock hammer and a large poster of Rita Hayworth for Andy. Assigned to work in the prison laundry, Andy is frequently sexually assaulted by "the Sisters" and their leader, Bogs Diamond.


title: The Shawshank Redemption

text: In 1949, Andy overhears the captain of the guards, Byron Hadley, complaining about being taxed on an inheritance and offers to help him shelter the money legally. After an assault by the Sisters nearly kills Andy, Hadley beats and cripples Bogs, who is subsequently transferred to another prison; Andy is not attacked again. Warden Samuel Norton meets Andy and reassigns him to the prison library to assist elderly inmate Brooks Hatlen, a front to use Andy's financial expertise to manage financial matters for other prison staff, guards from other prisons, and the warden himself. Andy begins writing weekly letters to the state legislature requesting funds to improve the prison's decrepit library.


title: The Shawshank Redemption

text: Brooks is paroled in 1954 after serving 50 years, but he cannot adjust to the outside world and eventually hangs himself. The legislature sends a library donation that includes a recording of "The Marriage of Figaro"; Andy plays an excerpt over the public address system and is punished with solitary confinement. After his release from solitary, Andy explains to a dismissive Red that hope is what gets him through his time. In 1963, Norton begins exploiting prison labor for public works, profiting by undercutting skilled labor costs and receiving bribes. Andy launders the money using the alias "Randall Stephens".


title: The Shawshank Redemption

text: Tommy Williams is incarcerated for burglary in 1965. Andy and Red befriend him, and Andy helps him pass his General Educational Development (GED) exam. A year later, Tommy reveals to Red and Andy that his cellmate at another prison had claimed responsibility for the murders for which Andy was convicted. Andy approaches Norton with this information, but Norton refuses to listen, and when Andy mentions the money laundering, Norton sends him back to solitary confinement. Norton has Hadley fatally shoot Tommy under the guise of an escape attempt. Andy refuses to continue the money laundering, but Norton threatens to destroy the library, remove Andy's protection from the guards, and move him to worse conditions. Andy is released from solitary confinement after two months, and he tells a skeptical Red that he dreams of living in Zihuatanejo, a Mexican town on the Pacific coast. Andy also tells him of a specific hayfield near Buxton, asking Red—once he is released—to retrieve a package that Andy buried there. Red worries about Andy's well-being, especially when he learns Andy asked a fellow inmate for some rope.


title: The Shawshank Redemption

text: At the next day's roll call, the guards find Andy's cell empty. An irate Norton throws a rock at a poster of Raquel Welch hanging on the cell wall, revealing a tunnel that Andy dug with his rock hammer over the past 19 years. The previous night, Andy used the rope to escape through the tunnel and prison sewage pipe, taking Norton's suit, shoes, and ledger, containing evidence of the money laundering. While guards search for him, Andy poses as Randall Stephens, withdraws over $370,000 (equivalent to $ in ) of the laundered money from several banks, and mails the ledger and other evidence of the corruption and murders at Shawshank to a local newspaper. State police arrive at Shawshank and take Hadley into custody, while Norton commits suicide to avoid arrest.


title: The Shawshank Redemption

text: The following year, Red is finally paroled after serving 40 years. He struggles to adapt to life outside prison and fears that he never will. Remembering his promise to Andy, he visits Buxton and finds a cache containing money and a letter asking him to come to Zihuatanejo. Red violates his parole by traveling to Fort Hancock, Texas, and crossing the border into Mexico, admitting that he finally feels hope. He finds Andy on a beach in Zihuatanejo, and the two reunited friends happily embrace.