2. Information about Columbia Pictures
 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. (CPII) is an American film production and distribution studio,
that is part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment,
a subsidiary of Sony Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of
the leading film studios in the world, a member of the so-called Big Six. It was one of the so-called
Little Three among the eight major film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age.
 The studio, founded in 1918 as Cohn-Brandt-Cohn Film Sales by brothers Jack and Harry Cohn and
Joe Brandt, released its first feature film in August 1922. It adopted the Columbia Pictures name
in 1924 and went public two years later. The name is derived from "Columbia", a national
personification of the United States, which is used as the company's logo.
In its early years a minor player in Hollywood, Columbia began to grow in the late 1920s, spurred
by a successful association with director Frank Capra.
 With Capra and others, Columbia became one of the primary homes of the screwball comedy. In
the 1930s, Columbia's major contract stars were Jean Arthur and Cary Grant. In the 1940s, Rita
Hayworth became the studio's premier star and propelled their fortunes into the late 1950s.
Rosalind Russell, Glenn Ford, and William Holden also became major stars at the studio.
 In 1982, the studio was purchased by Coca-Cola. Five years later, Coca-Cola spun off Columbia,
which was sold to Tri-Star as the latter became Columbia Pictures Entertainment. After a brief
period of independence with Coca-Cola maintaining a financial interest, the combined studio was
acquired by Japanese company Sony in 1989.

3.  The predecessor of Columbia Pictures, CBC Film Sales Corporation, was founded
in 1918 by Harry Cohn, his brother Jack Cohn, and Joe Brandt.
 Brandt was president of CBC Film Sales, handling
sales, marketing and distribution from New York
along with Jack Cohn, while Harry Cohn ran
production in Hollywood. The studio's early
productions were low-budget short subjects:
"Screen Snapshots", the "Hall Room Boys"
(the vaudeville duo Of Edward Flanagan and
Neely Edwards), and the Chaplin imitator Billy West.
The start-up CBC leased space in a Poverty Row studio on Hollywood's famously
low-rent Gower Street. Among Hollywood's elite, the studio's small-time
reputation led some to joke that "CBC" stood for "Corned Beef and Cabbage".

4.  At Harry Cohn's insistence the studio signed The Three Stooges in 1934. Rejected by MGM (which
kept straight-man Ted Healy but let the Stooges go), the Stooges made 190 shorts for Columbia
between 1934 and 1957. Columbia's short-subject department employed many famous
comedians, including Buster Keaton, Charley Chase, Harry Langdon, Andy Clyde, and Hugh
Herbert. Almost 400 of Columbia's 529 two-reel comedies were released to television in the late
1950s; to date, only the Stooges, Keaton, and short films starring Charley Chase, Shemp Howard,
Joe Besser, and Joe DeRita have been released to home video.
 In the early 1930s Columbia distributed Walt Disney's famous Mickey Mouse cartoons. In 1934
the studio established its own animation house, under the Screen Gems
brand; Columbia's leading cartoon series were Krazy Kat, Scrappy, The
Fox and the Crow, and (very briefly) Li'l Abner. In the late 1940s Columbia
agreed to release animated shorts from United Productions of America;
these new shorts were more sophisticated than Columbia's older
cartoons, and many won critical praise and industry awards.
 According to Bob Thomas's book King Cohn, studio chief Harry Cohn
always placed a high priority on serials. Beginning in 1937 Columbia
entered the lucrative serial market, and kept making these episodic
adventures until 1956, after other studios had discontinued them.
The most famous Columbia serials are based on comic-strip or radio
characters: Mandrake the Magician, The Shadow, Terry and the Pirates,
Midnight, The Phantom, Batman, and Superman, among many others.
Columbia also had separate units shooting Western B pictures.

5.  The volatile film business made Coke shareholders nervous, and following the
box-office failure, Ishtar, Coke sold its entertainment holdings on December 21,
1987 to Tri-Star Pictures for $3.1 billion.
 This created Columbia/Tri-Star by merging Columbia and Tri-Star.
 Tri-Star Pictures, Inc. was renamed to Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc. with
Coke owning 49% of the company.
 Both studios continued to produce and distribute films under their separate
names.
 Puttnam was succeeded by Dawn Steel, the first woman to run a Hollywood
motion picture studio.
 On January 4, 1988, Columbia/Embassy Television and Tri-Star Television were
formed into the new Columbia Pictures Television and Embassy Communications
was renamed to ELP Communications.
 On April 13, 1988, CPE spun-off Tri-Star Pictures, Inc. as a reformed company of
the Tri-Star studio.

6.  On February 21, 1994, Columbia Pictures Television and TriStar Television were
merged into Columbia TriStar Television,including the rights to Wheel of Fortune
and Jeopardy! after CTT folded Merv Griffin Enterprises.
 In 1997, Columbia Pictures ranked as the highest grossing movie studio in the
United States with a gross of $1.256 billion.
 In 1998, Columbia and TriStar merged to form the Columbia TriStar Motion
Picture Group (a.k.a. Columbia TriStar Pictures), though both studios still
produce and distribute under their own names. Pascal retained her position as
president of the newly united Columbia Pictures, while Lee became the
combined studio's head of production. In 1999, Sony Pictures Entertainment
relaunched the Screen Gems brand as a horror and independent film
distribution company and TriStar Television was folded into CTT. Two years later,
CPT was folded into CTT as well.

7. Columbia pictures has produced thousands of films, starting from the 1920s and
they are still making films now.
Columbia pictures have produced films such as;
 Men in Black, Men in Black II and Men in Black 3
 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
 The Karate Kid
 Grown Ups
 The Social Network
 Bad Teacher
 The Amazing Spider-Man
 Skyfall
 Charlie's Angels
 The Wedding Planner
 Panic Room
 Daddy Day Care