Film production companies of the United States

Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 192. Chapters: RKO Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Hanna-Barbera, Universal Studios, Participant Media, United Artists, DreamWorks Animation, Marvel Studios, Columbia Pictures, Evil Angel (studio), Pixar, Rooster Teeth Productions, 20th Century Fox, Film Booking Offices of America, Relativity Media, Legendary Pictures, Extreme Associates, Blowback Productions, The Weinstein Company, Sesame Workshop, Miramax Films, Screen Gems, Vivid Entertainment, Wong Fu Productions, Liberty Media, LIFT Productions, Amblin Entertainment, Focus Features, Brain Damage Films, Republic Pictures, Elegant Angel, Biograph Company, Intercontinental Releasing Corporation, Marvel Animation, JM Productions, Family Rosary Crusade, Pacific Data Images, Full Moon Features, Monogram Pictures. Excerpt: RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) Pictures is an American film production and distribution company. As RKO Radio Pictures Inc., it was one of the Big Five studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) theater chains and Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) studio were brought together under the control of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in October 1928. RCA chief David Sarnoff engineered the merger to create a market for the company's sound-on-film technology, RCA Photophone. By the mid-1940s, the studio was under the control of investor Floyd Odlum. RKO has long been celebrated for its cycle of musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the mid-to-late 1930s. Actors Katharine Hepburn and, later, Robert Mitchum had their first major successes at the studio. Cary Grant was a mainstay for years. The work of producer Val Lewton's low-budget horror unit and RKO's many ventures into the field now known as film noir have been acclaimed, largely after the fact, by film critics and historians. The studio produced two of the most famous films in motion picture history: King Kong and Citizen Kane. Maverick industrialist Howard Hughes took over RKO in 1948. After years of decline under his control, the studio was acquired by the General Tire and Rubber Company in 1955. The original RKO Pictures ceased production in 1957 and was effectively dissolved two years later. In 1981, broadcaster RKO General, the corporate heir, revived it as a production subsidiary, RKO Pictures Inc. In 1989, this business with its few remaining assets, the trademarks and remake rights to many classic RKO films, was sold to new owners, who now operate the small independent company RKO Pictures LLC. In October 1927, Warner Bros. released The Jazz Singer, the first feature-length talking picture. Its success prompted Hollywood to convert from silent to sound film production en masse. The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) contr