United Artists: Difference between revisions

United Artists was formed in 1919 by four of the leading figures in early Hollywood era: Mary Pickford, Sir Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith. It was sold to Arthur Krim and Robert Benjamin in 1951; both Chaplin and Pickford sold the remaining shares to Krim and Benjamin in 1956. United Artists was sold to Transamerica Corporation on April 27, 1967, and later to Tracinda, Inc. (the then-current owner of [[Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios|Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc]].) on July 28, 1981. In 2000, United Artists was made as an art-house theater label of MGM. On April 8, 2005, Sony Corporation, Comcast, and four of its private partners bought MGM and United Artists for $4.8 billion. In November 2006, Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner were made the new owners of this revamped United Artists. However on August 14, 2008, Wagner left the studio, but still remained a stockholder in United Artists. In 2011, it became completely owned by MGM again when the studio purchased the stock formerly owned by Cruise and Wagner. As a result, UA was absorbed, but still exists as a in-name-only unit of MGM. In September 2014, MGM acquired a stake in Mark Burnett's companies One Three Media and Lightworkers Media, merging them into [[United Artists Media Group]]; however, next year, this unit was absorbed into [[MGM Television]]. In 2018, however, MGM revived the brand as United Artists Digital Studio, and the United Artists name would finally return to the big screen in 2019 as [[United Artists Releasing]], a re-branding of Mirror, a joint venture between MGM and [[Annapurna Pictures]].