American International Pictures: Difference between revisions

'''American International Pictures''' was formed in 1954 by James H. Nicholson and entertainment lawyer Samuel Z. Arkoff originally as "American Releasing Corporation", dedicated to releasing independently produced, low-budget and genre films (such as horror, sci-fi, and African-American), primarily of interest to the teenagers from the 1950s to late 1970s. In April 1956, ARC merged with global production company International Productions (not to be confused with "[[International Pictures Corporation|International Pictures]]", who already merged with [[Universal Studios]] and formed "Universal-International" in 1946) to form AIP. In 1979, AIP was acquired by Filmways, Inc. for $4.3 million and in 1980, AIP was folded into Filmways becoming "[[Filmways Pictures]]". Today, most of the AIP library is owned by [[MGM]], via their acquisition of [[Orion Pictures]], which acquired Filmways in 1982 (later reincorporated itself as "Orion Pictures Corporation" in June), except for a select few of AIP's early releases. Some of these (like ''The Fast and the Furious)'' went into the public domain, and some were retained by Samuel Z. Arkoff's estate, while 11 others were retained by James H. Nicholson's estate; these early releases are rarely seen now, as the estate effectively refuses to license them, but when they were still available in the early 1990s (and were featured on ''Mystery Science Theater 3000''), they, along with the still-available Arkoff-owned films, were distributed by [[Teleworld, Inc.]]