Touchstone Pictures: Difference between revisions

'''Touchstone Pictures''' (formerly "Touchstone Films") was established by [[The Walt Disney Company|Walt Disney Productions]] on February 15, 1984 to produce and distribute more adult-oriented films. The company was merely a brand and didn't operate as a separate company. The company became a dominant force between its establishment in the 1980s to the early 2000s, making several successful films such as ''Who Framed Roger Rabbit'', ''Three Men and a Baby'', ''Adventures in Babysitting'', ''The Nightmare Before Christmas'', ''The Color of Money'', ''Con Air'', ''Unbreakable'', ''Signs'', and many more films. However, the company began a slow decline in 2003 with the success of ''Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl'' as the first PG-13 film released under the mainline [[Walt Disney Pictures]] banner. The label became relegated to R-rated and PG and PG-13 fare that didn't fit the mainline banner as a result. Two huge blows were dealt to the company in 2009: first, the then-new Disney chairman Rich Ross trimmed the number of films Disney released in a year to eight. This business plan resulted in planned sequels for Touchstone hits being cancelled, and many more flops to come for Disney in general (he left after the failures of ''John Carter'' and ''Mars Needs Moms''); the last Touchstone film released solo, without distributing for others, was ''You Again''. Meanwhile, Disney eventually stopped producing adult-oriented but family-friendly films after ''Old Dogs'' flopped with critics (though it did reasonably well at the box office). After all this, Touchstone began merely distributing films for [[Lucasfilm Ltd.|Lucasfilm]], [[Miramax Films|Miramax]], and [[DreamWorks Pictures|DreamWorks Studios]] (except the EMEA region and India), as well as foreign films and titles Disney didn't see value in. It didn't help either that Disney was beginning to release their Marvel and ''Star Wars'' films under the respective [[Marvel Studios]] and Lucasfilm brands. The final blow came with the critical and commercial failure of ''Strange Magic'', with them only distributing ''Bridge of Spies'' and ''The Light Between Oceans'' since then, the latter ultimately being the company's final film. Disney quietly retired the label on December 20, 2017<ref>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/05/business/media/disney-streaming-service-ricky-strauss.html</ref> after the expiration of their DreamWorks deal in August 2016 (since they went back to [[Amblin Partners]] and [[Universal Pictures]] for distribution) and their eventual acquisition of [[21st Century Fox]] in 2019. Its slate has since been taken over by Walt Disney Pictures (for most Disney style films), [[20th Century Studios]] (for non-Disney style films and several mid-budget adult films), and [[Searchlight Pictures]] (for low-budget, independent and third-party films), while several other Disney divisions have produced or are developing television series and films based on previous Touchstone properties for [[Disney+ Originals|Disney+]] and [[Hulu]]. However, the 2018 film ''Sherlock Gnomes'', the sequel and spin-off to ''Gnomeo & Juliet'', was released by [[Paramount Pictures]] and [[Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios|Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer]] instead of Disney. Although the 2019 film ''Glass'' was rumored to be released by Touchstone outside of the United States, it was instead released under the revived [[Buena Vista International]] label. Today, Touchstone is in a similar place as Disney's other former mature label, [[Hollywood Pictures]], existing solely as an in-name-only unit to hold the copyright of their films.