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By 1949, with the success of television threatening the film industry more and more, Harry Warner decided to shift his focus towards television production.[HBTN 44] However, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) would not permit it.[HBTN 44] After an unsuccessful attempt to convince other movie studio bosses to switch their focus to television, Harry abandoned his television efforts.[HBTN 51] The other Warner brother, Jack, began his hatred of television with problems with Milton Berle being hired by the studio to make an unsuccessful film Always Leave Them Laughing during the peak of his television popularity. Warner felt that Berle was not strong enough as a lead to carry a film and that people would not pay to see the man they could see on television for free. However Jack Warner was pressured into using Berle, even replacing Danny Kaye with him.[40] Berle's outrageous behaviour on the set and the film's massive failure proving Jack Warner right led to Jack Warner forbidding television sets appearing in the studio's film sets.[41] James Garner and Jack Kelly in Maverick (1957). On March 21, 1955, the studio was finally able engage in television through the successful Warner Bros. Television unit run by William T. Orr, Jack Warner's son-in-law. Warner Bros. Television provided the ABC with a weekly show, Warner Bros. Presents; the show featured a rotating series of shows based on three of the studio's film successes, Kings Row, Casablanca and Cheyenne, followed by a promotion for one of Warner's big screen films.[42][cph 60] It was not a success.[cph 61] The studio's next effort would be making a weekly series out of Cheyenne.[cph 62] Cheyenne was television's first one hour Western, with two episodes placed together for feature film release outside the United States. In the tradition of their B pictures, the studio followed up with a series of rapidly produced popular Westerns, such as writer/producer Roy Huggins' critically lauded Maverick as well as Sugarfoot, Bronco, Lawman, The Alaskans and Colt .45.[cph 62] The success of these series helped to make up for the losses on the film side.[cph 62] As a result, Jack Warner decided to emphasize television production.[cph 63] Warners then produced a series of popular private detective shows beginning with 77 Sunset Strip (1958–64) followed by Hawaiian Eye (1959–1963), Bourbon Street Beat (1960) and Surfside Six (1960–1962). Within a few years, the studio, in a matter reminiscent of their problems with James Cagney and Bette Davis, provoked hostility among their emerging contract TV stars like Clint Walker and James Garner, who sued over a contract dispute[cph 64] and won. Edd Byrnes was not so lucky and bought himself out of his contract. Jack Warner was angered by the perceived ingratitude of television actors, who evidently showed more independence than film actors, and this deepened his contempt for the new medium.[cph 65] Many of Warners television stars appeared in the casts of Warner's cinema releases of the time. In 1963 as a result of a court decision Warners has to cease their contracts with their television stars, engaging them for specific series or film roles. In the same year Jack Webb took over the television unit and did not have any successes. Warner Bros. Records Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra Warner Bros. was already the owner of extensive music-publishing holdings, whose tunes had appeared in countless Warners cartoons (arranged by Carl Stalling) and television shows (arranged by Max Steiner[43]). In 1958, the studio launched Warner Bros. Records. Initially the label released recordings made by their television stars whether they could sing or not and records based on the soundtracks of favourite Warner Bros. Television shows. In 1963, Jack Warner agreed to a "rescue takeover" of Frank Sinatra's Reprise Records.[cph 66] The deal gave Sinatra US$1.5 million and part ownership of Warner Bros. Records, with Reprise becoming a sub-label;[cph 66] most significantly for Warner Bros.'s future music operations, the deal also brought Reprise manager Morris "Mo" Ostin into the company. In 1964, upon seeing the profits record companies made from Warner film music, Jack Warner decided to claim ownership of the studio's film soundtracks and focus on making profits through Warner Bros. Records.[cph 67] In its first eighteen months, Warner Bros. Records lost around $2 million.[cph 68] New owners Warner Bros. rebounded in the late 1950s, specializing in adaptations of popular plays like The Bad Seed (1956), No Time for Sergeants (1958), and Gypsy (1962). With his health slowly recovering from a car accident whilst on holiday to France in 1958, Jack returned to the studio and made sure his name was featured in studio press releases. In each of the first three years of the 1960s, the studio's net profit was a little over $7 million.[HBTN 52] Warner paid an unprecedented $5.5 million for the film rights to the Broadway musical My Fair Lady in February 1962. The previous owner, CBS director William S. Paley, set terms including half the distributor's gross profits "plus ownership of the negative at the end of the contract."[cph 69] In 1963, the net profit dropped to $3.7 million.[HBTN 52] By the mid-1960s, motion picture production was in decline. There were few studio-produced films and many more co-productions (for which Warner provided facilities, money, and distribution), and pickups of independently made pictures. With the success of the studio's 1965 Broadway play The Great Race,[cph 68] as well as its soundtrack,[cph 68] Warner Bros. Records became a profitable subsidiary. The studio's 1966 film Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? was a huge success at the box office.[cph 70] Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as Bonnie and Clyde (1967) In November 1966, Jack gave in to advancing age and the changing times,[cph 71] selling control of the studio and its music business to Seven Arts Productions, run by the Canadian investors Elliot and Kenneth Hyman, for $32 million.[cph 72] The company, including the studio, was renamed Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. Jack Warner did, however, remain studio president until the summer of 1967, when Camelot failed at the box office and Warner gave up his position to the studio's longtime publicity director, Ben Kalmenson;[cph 73] Warner did, however, remain on board as an independent producer and vice-president.[cph 72] With the success of the studio's 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, Warner Bros was making profits once again.[cph 74] Two years later, the Hymans, now fed up with Jack Warner,[cph 74] accepted a cash-and-stock offer from an odd conglomerate called Kinney National Company for more than $64 million.[cph 74] Kinney owned a Hollywood talent agency, Ashley-Famous,[44] and it was Ted Ashley who led Kinney head Steve Ross to purchase Warner Bros. Ashley became the new head of the studio, and the name was changed to Warner Bros., Inc. once again. Jack Warner, however, was outraged by the Hymans' sale,[cph 74] and decided to retire.[cph 74] Although movie audiences had shrunk, Warner's new management believed in the drawing power of stars, signing co-production deals with several of the biggest names of the day, among them Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, and Clint Eastwood, carrying the studio successfully through the 1970s and 1980s. Warner Bros. also made major profits on films built around the characters of Superman and Batman, owned by Warner Bros. subsidiary DC Comics. Abandoning the mundane parking lots and funeral homes, the refocused Kinney renamed itself in honor of its best-known holding, Warner Communications. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Warner Communications branched out into other business, such as its acquiring of video game company Atari, Inc. in 1976, and later the Six Flags theme parks. From 1971 until the end of 1987, Warner's international distribution operations were a joint venture with Columbia Pictures, and in some countries, this joint venture also distributed films from other companies (like EMI Films and Cannon Films in the UK). Warner ended the venture in 1988 and joined up with Walt Disney Pictures; this joint venture lasted until 1993, when Disney created Buena Vista International. In 1972, in a cost-cutting move, Warner and Columbia Pictures formed a partnership called The Burbank Studios in which they would share production facilities utilitizing the Warner lot in Burbank. The partnership ended in 1990 when Columbia moved into the former MGM studio lot in Culver City. To the surprise of many, flashy, star-driven Warner Communications merged in 1989 with the white-shoe publishing company Time Inc. Though Time and its magazines claimed a higher tone, it was the Warner Bros. film and music units which provided the profits. The Time Warner merger was almost derailed when Paramount Communications (Formerly Gulf+Western, later sold to Viacom), launched a $12.2 billion hostile takeover bid for Time Inc., forcing Time to acquire Warner for $14.9 billion cash/stock offer. Paramount responded with a lawsuit filed in Delaware court to break up the merger. Paramount lost and the merger proceeded. In 1992, the division Warner Bros. Family Entertainment was established to produce various family-oriented films. In 1997, Time Warner sold the Six Flags unit. The takeover of Time Warner in 2000 by then-high-flying AOL did not prove a good match, and following the collapse in "dot-com" stocks, the AOL name was banished from the corporate nameplate. Since 1995 A panoramic view over today's studio premises. 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, Smallville, 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 1998, Warner Bros. celebrated its 75th anniversary around the world. 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. 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.[45] 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.”[46] This resulted in a massive fan backlash.[47] 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 favor of Blu-ray Disc.[48] 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).[49] However, the Harry Potter movies have produced a net loss due to Hollywood accounting.[50] IMAX Corp. has finalized a pact with Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. Pictures unit to release as many as 20 giant-format films through 2013.[51] 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. Active producer deals Alcon Entertainment Cruel and Unusual Films DC Entertainment Dune Entertainment Gary Sanchez Productions Malpaso Productions Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer RatPac Entertainment Syncopy Inc. Village Roadshow Pictures Film library Gate 4, Warner Bros. Studios, looking south towards the water tower. Main article: List of Warner Bros. 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[36][37] films and cartoons to a holding company called Associated Artists Productions (a.a.p.). a.a.p. also got the Fleischer Studios and Famous Studios Popeye cartoons originally from Paramount. Two years later, a.a.p. was sold to United Artists (UA), which held them until 1981, when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought UA.[citation needed] Five years later, Turner Broadcasting System, having failed to buy MGM, settled for ownership of the MGM/UA library. This included almost all the pre-May 1986 MGM film and television library with the exception of those owned by United Artists (i.e. James Bond franchise), although some UA material were included such as the a.a.p. library, the U.S. rights to a majority of the RKO Radio Pictures library, and the television series Gilligan's Island.[citation needed] In 1991, Turner Broadcasting System bought animation studio Hanna-Barbera Productions, and much of the back catalog of both Hanna-Barbera and Ruby-Spears Enterprises from Great American Broadcasting, and years later, Turner bought Castle Rock Entertainment on December 25, 1993[52] and New Line Cinema on January 28, 1994.[53][54] 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 MGM/UA in 1982, but the deal fell through. 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. The Warner Bros. Archives The University of Southern California Warner Bros. Archives is the largest single studio collection in the world. Donated in 1977 to USC's School of Cinema-Television by Warner Communications, the WBA houses departmental records that detail Warner Bros. activities from the studio's first major feature, My Four Years in Germany (1918), to its sale to Seven Arts in 1968. It presents a complete view of the production process during the Golden Age of Hollywood and has been invaluable to research. UA donated pre-1950 Warner Bros. nitrate negatives to the Library of Congress and post-1951 negatives to the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Most of the company's legal files, scripts, and production materials were donated to the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. |
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