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Carolco Pictures, Inc. was an independent production company went from producing such films as Terminator 2: Judgment Day and the Rambo series to being sunk after producing bombs such as Cutthroat Island and Showgirls.
The company was founded by two film investors Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna. Their goal was to make Carolco a major independent production company producing A-movie product.
One of the first Carolco films was the sequel Rambo: First Blood Part II with Sylvester Stallone (who later signed a ten-picture deal with Carolco). The film was a box-office success. This led to Carolco acquiring the rights to the Terminator franchise from Hemdale Film Corporation. The studio hired James Cameron to direct, and Arnold Schwarzenegger to star, in a multi-million-dollar budgeted sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day (released in 1991). It was the highest-grossing film of its year, and as it turned out, the most successful film in Carolco's history.
Among the other films in Carolco's library: Extreme Prejudice, Cliffhanger (also starring Stallone), Chaplin, The Doors (directed by Oliver Stone), Total Recall (another Schwarzenegger box-office hit), Basic Instinct, Iron Eagle II, and Stargate. About 80% of their entire output was released through Tri-Star Pictures.
In later years, Carolco acquired television syndicator Orbis Communications and initiated television production and distribution. They also built a production facility in North Carolina (where the television series Matlock was partially filmed), and established a home video division (with Live Entertainment, later Artisan Entertainment and Lions Gate Home Entertainment, as output partner).
But as budgets for their feature films grew, the box-office intake was unfortunately minimum. Following the disastrous releases of Cutthroat Island and Showgirls, Carolco went bankrupt and the company closed soon after.
The assets of Carolco were later sold off to other companies, most already sold during Carolco's existence. Today, the ancillary rights to a majority of Carolco's library are held by French production company StudioCanal, while Paramount Domestic Television holds the television rights, and Lions Gate continues to hold the home video rights (via a new output deal with Studio Canal). The only Carolco films not included in the deal are Cliffhanger, Aces: Iron Eagle III, Last Of The Dogmen, and Showgirls, the rights to these have been retained by their original theatrical distributors (Tri-Star, New Line Cinema, Savoy Pictures/HBO, and United Artists, respectively).
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