TriStar Pictures

TriStar Pictures, Inc. (spelled as Tri-Star until 1991) is an American film studio and production company that is part of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, which is part of the Japanese conglomerate Sony Group Corporation.

The company was founded on March 2, 1982, as Nova Pictures, a joint venture of Columbia Pictures, CBS, and HBO, whose video units handled video, broadcast, and pay cable rights to its products. It was renamed a year later to Tri-Star to avoid confusion with the PBS series ''Nova''.

Among its notable releases are ''Terminator 2: Judgment Day'', ''Basic Instinct'', ''Rambo: First Blood Part II,'' and Hollywood’s first ''Godzilla''.

The company scored box-office hits with modestly budgeted fare in the 1980s. It also cut fortuitous distribution deals with the Producers Sales Organization, Carolco Pictures and the Taft Entertainment Group; acquired Loews Theatres; and formed a television arm. Among the various hits TriStar scored on its own during the decade were ''About Last Night'', ''The Muppets Take Manhattan'', ''Real Genius'', ''Nothing in Common'', ''Peggy Sue Got Married'', ''The Principal'', ''Look Who's Talking'' and ''Steel Magnolias''.

Columbia Pictures bought CBS' stake in the joint venture on November 15, 1985, and HBO's stake in 1986. On December 21, 1987, Tri-Star Pictures, Inc. was renamed Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc. following The Coca-Cola Company's merger of Tri-Star and Columbia to become "Columbia/Tri-Star", of which it owned 80% of its stock. In January 1988, CPE's stocks somewhat fell, and Coca-Cola decreased its shares in CPE to 49%. On April 13, 1988, the name of the company reverted to Tri-Star Pictures, Inc. On November 8, 1989, the Sony Corporation of Japan acquired Columbia Pictures Entertainment for $3.4 billion. On August 7, 1991, under Sony Pictures Entertainment, the hyphen was officially removed from the name of the studio. TriStar became the first new American major film studio since RKO Pictures, which was founded in 1928.

During the 1990s, TriStar operated autonomously from Columbia. Although its products were mostly indistinguishable from that of its sister studio, it soon scored a string of hits at the box office with such films as ''Sleepless in Seattle'', ''Philadelphia'', ''The Mirror Has Two Faces'', ''Jerry Maguire'', ''As Good as It Gets'', ''Bugsy'' and ''Jumanji'', and it also scored a major video hit with Danny DeVito's ''Matilda''. However, in 1998, the company fell on hard times following the box-office disappointment of its remake of the Japanese monster film ''Godzilla'', and Sony quickly responded by merging the studio with Columbia to form the Columbia TriStar Motion Pictures Group. The TriStar name was subsequently used by Sony on a very limited basis until 2004, when the company decided to turn the studio into a genre label that specialized in acquisitions. In 2015, Sony formed TriStar Productions as a vehicle for film and television productions. TriStar Pictures is currently being used as a vehicle for distribution of products from that new entity and other items from Sony Pictures, including titles from Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions.

TriStar Pictures is currently one of the five live-action labels of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, alongside Columbia Pictures, Screen Gems, Sony Pictures Classics, and 3000 Pictures. Provided by Wikipedia