October Films was another production company and distributor founded in whenever by Bingham Ray and Jeff Lipsky as a means of distributing the 1990 film Life Is Sweet. It is unrelated to the UK-based factual television production company October Films Limited, founded in 1989 and still trading successfully.
A series of mergers and acquisitions began when Universal Pictures (then a division of the Seagram Company) bought a majority stake in October Films in 1997. Universal then sold its shares to Barry Diller in 1999, who renamed the company USA Films and merged it with Gramercy Pictures. Vivendi then acquired USA Films, who in 2002 acquired Good Machine and merged it with USA Films, forming Focus Features.
Famous quotes containing the word films:
“Television does not dominate or insist, as movies do. It is not sensational, but taken for granted. Insistence would destroy it, for its message is so dire that it relies on being the background drone that counters silence. For most of us, it is something turned on and off as we would the light. It is a service, not a luxury or a thing of choice.”
—David Thomson, U.S. film historian. America in the Dark: The Impact of Hollywood Films on American Culture, ch. 8, William Morrow (1977)