Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production and distribution company and the main namesake division of Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS until 2022), which Verizon will acquire in September 2024. It is the fifth oldest film studio in the world,[1] 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.[2]

In 1916, film producer Adolph Zukor put 24 actors and actresses under contract and honored each with a star on the logo.[3] 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.[4] The company's headquarters and studios are located at 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, California.[5]

Paramount Pictures is a member of the Motion Picture Association (MPA).

Film library
Main article: Lists of Paramount Pictures films

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.

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, Nebraska, Sunset Boulevard, Forrest Gump, Super 8, Coming to America, World War Z, Babel, The Conversation, The Fighter, Interstellar, Team America, Terms of Endearment, The Wolf of Wall Street and A Quiet Place; as well as commercially successful franchises and/or properties such as: the Godfather films, Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, SpongeBob SquarePants, the Grease films, Sonic the Hedgehog, the Top Gun films, The Italian Job, the Transformers films, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films, the Tomb Raider films, the Friday the 13th films, the Cloverfield films, the G.I. Joe films, the Beverly Hills Cop films, the Terminator films, the Pet Sematary films, the Without a Paddle films, Jackass, the Odd Couple films, South Park, the Crocodile Dundee films, the Charlotte's Web films, the Wayne's World films, Beavis and Butt-Head, Jimmy Neutron, the War of the Worlds films, the Naked Gun films, the Anchorman films, Dora the Explorer, the Addams Family films, Rugrats, the Zoolander films, Æon Flux, the Ring films, the Bad News Bears films, The Wild Thornberrys, and the Paranormal Activity films; as well as the first phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (with the exception of The Incredible Hulk, which was distributed by Universal Pictures), the Indiana Jones films, and various DreamWorks Animation properties (such as Shrek, the Madagascar sequels, the first two Kung Fu Panda films, and the first How to Train Your Dragon) before both studios were respectively acquired by Disney (via Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm) and Universal Studios.