Warner Bros. was founded in 1923 by four Polish immigrant brothers in Ohio who began exhibiting movies and later moved into film production and distribution. Headquartered in Burbank, California and New York, it is now a major American film, television, and music studio and subsidiary of Time Warner. Over the decades through mergers and acquisitions, Warner Bros. has accumulated a diverse collection of films, cartoons, and television shows, including owning the rights to major franchises like Harry Potter and Batman.

1. WARNER BROS
WOULD HAVE SEEN THIS LOGO A LOT WHILE SEEING
MOVIES BUT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS?
Then here is something that will tell you about this institution.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., formerly known as Warner
Bros. Studios, commonly referred to as Warner Bros or Warner
Brothers. Warner Bro’s is an American producer of film, television, and
music entertainment.
One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters
in Burbank, California and New York. Warner bros has several subsidiary companies,
including Warner Bros. Studios, Warner Bros. Pictures, Warner Bros. Interactive
Entertainment, Warner Bros. Television, Warner Bros. Animation, Warner Home
Video, New Line Cinema, TheWB.com and DC Entertainment.
Warner Bros. is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America.

2. WHO FOUNDED WARNER BRO’S?
The company was founded by four brothers, Harry, Albert, Samuel and Jack
Warner, who were the sons of Benjamin Eichelbaum, an immigrant polish
cobbler and peddler. The brothers began their careers showing moving pictures in
Ohio and Pennsylvania on a travelling basis. Beginning in 1903 they started
acquiring movie theatres, and then moved into film distribution. In about 1913 they
began producing there own films, and in 1917 they shifted their production
headquarters to Hollywood, Calif. They established WARNER BRO’S
PICTURES, INC., in 1923.The oldest of the brothers; Harry was the president of
the company and ran its headquarters in New York City, while Albert was its
treasurer and head of sales and distribution. Sam and Jack managed the studio in
Hollywood.
When the company ran into financial difficulties in the mid-1920s, Sam Warner
persuaded his brothers to collaborate in developing a patent on a process (Vita
phone) that made the “talkies” possible. The studio’s Don Juan (1926) opened with a
completely synchronized musical sound track, and The Jazz Singer (1927) had both
synchronized music and dialogue. (Sam died only 24 hours before the latter’s
premiere.) Warner Brothers then made Lights of New York (1928), the first full-length
all-talking film, and On with the Show (1929), the first all-talking colour film.
The enormous financial success of these early sound films enabled Warner Brothers
to become a major motion-picture studio. By the 1930s Warner Brothers was

3. producing about 100 motion pictures a year and controlled 360 theatres in the United
States and more than 400 abroad.
Warner Brothers became known for its tightly budgeted, technically competent
entertainment films. In the early 1930s the company started the craze for gangster
films with Little Caesar (1931), The Public Enemy (1931), and Scar face (1932),
and throughout the ’30s it presented films featuring such stars as James Cagney and
Edward G. Robinson in gangster roles. In the ’30s Warner Brothers also presented
Busby Berkeley’s musical extravaganzas, many swashbuckling and adventure films
starring Errol Flynn, and dramas featuring such stars as Paul Muni, Bette
Davis, Humphrey Bogart, and John Garfield. Among the studio’s best-known films of
the 1940s and ’50s were The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942), Watch
on the Rhine (1943), and A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). The studio’s later
box-office successes included My Fair Lady (1964), Bonnie and
Clyde (1967), The Exorcist (1973), The Color Purple (1985), and The
Fugitive (1993).
Jack Warner was Warner’s long-time vice president in charge of production and
became the company’s president in 1956, after the last of his older brothers had
retired. He retired in 1972. Meanwhile, Warner Brothers had undergone various
corporate changes and had diversified into television programming, book publishing,
and musical recordings by the 1970s. In 1969 it became Warner Bros. Inc., a
subsidiary of Warner Communications Inc. In 1989 the latter company merged
with Time Inc. to form Time Warner Inc., the largest media and Entertainment
Corporation in the world. Time Warner inaugurated the WB, a broadcast television
network, in 1995.

4. -Jack Warner
AFTER MERGING WITH TIME.INC TO FORM TIME
WARNER:
In 1995, Warner and station owner Tribune Company of Chicago launched The
WB Network, finding a niche market in teenagers. The WB's early programming
included an abundance of teenage fare like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Small
Ville, Dawson’s Creek and One Tree Hill. Two dramas produced by Spelling
Television, 7th Heaven and Charmed also helped bring The WB into the spotlight,
with "Charmed" lasting eight seasons and being the longest running drama with
female leads and "7th Heaven" surviving eleven seasons and being the longest
running family drama and longest running show for The WB. In 2006, Warner
and CBS Paramount Television decided to close The WB and CBS's UPN and
jointly launch The CW Television Network. In 1999, Terry Semels and Robert
Daly resigned as heads of the studio after a career of 13 Oscar nominated films.
Many of Warner's top stars were considering quitting because of their absence. Daly
and Semels were said to popularize the modern model of partner financing and profit
sharing for film production.

5. In the late 1990s, Warner obtained rights to the Harry Potter novels, and released
feature film adaptations of the first in 2001, the second in 2002, the third in June
2004, the fourth in November 2005, and the fifth on July 11, 2007. The sixth was
slated for November 2008, but Warner moved it to July 2009 only three months
before the movie was supposed to come out, citing the lack of summer blockbusters
in 2009 (due to the Writer's Strike) as the reason. The decision was purely financial,
and Alan Horn said, "There were no delays. I’ve seen the movie. It is fabulous. We
would have been perfectly able to have it out in November. This resulted in a
massive fan backlash. The seventh and final adaptation was released in two
parts: Part 1 in November 2010 and Part 2 in July 2011.
Warner Bros. played a large part in the discontinuation of the HD DVD format. On
January 4, 2008, Warner Bros. announced that they would drop support of HD DVD
in favour of Blu-ray Disc. HD DVDs would continue to be released through May
2008 (when their contract with the HD DVD promotion group expired), but only
following Blu-ray and DVD releases. This started a chain of events which resulted in
HD DVD development and production being halted by Toshiba on February 16,
2008, ending the format war.
In 2009, Warner Bros. became the first studio in history to gross more than $2 billion
domestically in a single year.
Warner Bros. is responsible for the Harry Potter film series, the highest grossing
film series of all time, both domestic and international without inflation adjustment
and Batman film series, one of the only two film series to have two of its films earn
more than $1 billion worldwide. It is also responsible for Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows - PART 2 as Warner Bros.' highest grossing movie ever (the
former was The Dark Knight). However, the Harry Potter movies have produced a
net loss due to accounting tricks. IMAX Corp. has finalized a pact with Time

6. Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros.Pictures unit to release as many as 20 giant-format
films through 2013.
Since 2006, Warner Bros operated a joint venture with China Film Group
Corporation and HG to form Warner China Film HG to produce films in Hong
Kong and China, including Connected which is a remake of the 2004 thriller film
Cellular; they have co-produced many other Chinese films as well.
ABOUT THE FILMS:
Over the years, a series of mergers and acquisitions have helped Warner Bros.
(the present-day Time Warner subsidiary) to accumulate a diverse collection of
movies, cartoons, and television programs.
In the aftermath of the 1948 antitrust suit, uncertain times led Warner Bros. in
1956 to sell most of its pre-1950 films and cartoons to a holding company

7. called Associated Artists Productions, also got the Fleischer
Studios and Famous Studios Popeye cartoons originally from Paramount. Two
years later, Associated Artists Productions was sold to United Artists, which
held them until 1981, when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought UA.
Five years later, Turner Broadcasting System, having failed to buy MGM, settled
for ownership of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought / United Artists library. This
included almost all the pre-May 1986 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought film and
television library with the exception of those owned by United Artists (i.e. James
Bond franchise), although some United Artists material were included such as the
Associated Artists Productions library, the U.S. rights to a majority of the RKO
Radio Pictures library, and the television series Gilligan's Island.
In 1991, Turner Broadcasting System bought animation studio Hanna-Barbera
Productions, and much of the back catalogue of both Hanna-Barbera and Ruby-
Spears Enterprises from Great American Broadcasting, and years later, Turner
bought Castle Rock Entertainment on December 25, 1993 and New Line
Cinema on January 28, 1994. In 1996, Time Warner bought Turner Broadcasting
System, and as a result, the pre-1950 sound films and the pre-August 1948 cartoon
library (excluding the B&W Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies which WB
bought back as it merged with Seven Arts but including the Harman-Ising Merrie
Melodies, save Lady, Play Your Mandolin! which was bought back by WB
when merging with 7A) returned to WB ownership. WB tried to buy back the pre-1950
sound films and pre-August 1948 cartoons from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer / United
Artists in 1982, but the deal fell through.

8. In 2007, Warner Bros. added the Peanuts/Charlie Brown library to its collection (this
includes all the television specials and series outside of the theatrical library, which
continues to be owned by CBS and Paramount through Peanuts Worldwide, LLC,
licensor and owner of the Peanuts material).
In 2008, Warner Bros. closed New Line Cinema as an independent mini-major
studio; as a result, Warner added the New Line Cinema film and television library to
its collection. On October 15, 2009, Warner Bros. acquired the home entertainment
rights to the Sesame Street library, in conjunction with Sesame Workshop.