Line #40 Creator/TheCannonGroup


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/3_ynrlnps.jpg]]
2
3	->''"No other production organization in the world today--certainly not any of the seven Hollywood 'majors'--has taken more chances with serious, marginal films than Cannon."''
4	-->-- '''Creator/RogerEbert''', 1987
5
6	The Cannon Group, Inc. was an American movie studio that operated many companies, including Cannon Films. It was founded in 1967 by investors Dennis Friedland and Christopher C. "Chris" Dewey and specialized in many low- and medium-budget films. They additionally owned cinema chains in Europe (including in the UK) and Israel and a home video label. The company is most well known throughout its heyday of the 1980s under the leadership of Israeli-born producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, colloquially known as "Golan-Globus".
7
8	In the early years, under the leadership of Friedland and Dewey, the Cannon Group was a tightly run organization, producing exploitation films on very low budgets and sometimes NoBudget. Films had their budgets capped at no more than $300,000. After the SleeperHit ''Film/Joe1970'', throughout UsefulNotes/TheSeventies the company lost money from unsuccessful films whose descriptions often resembled softcore pornography. With these issues, it would become apparent that Friedland and Dewey would have to sell their studio.
9
10	This came to be in 1979 when Friedland and Dewey sold Cannon to Menahem Golan and his cousin Yoram Globus, two Israeli film producers seeking to expand into the wider market open to Hollywood studios. Under their new leadership of the Cannon Group, they moved the company's operations to Southern California and refocused its business model around acquiring scripts for lowbrow films and B-movies, most of them in the action genre, that would go into production and recoup their budgets prior to release by pre-selling foreign distribution and home video rights. This was what became the new focus of the company throughout the 1980s. The company did, however, have a more diverse amount of genres to cover with its films, including urban comedies (often inspired by dance fads), musicals, Holocaust dramas, SpeculativeFiction, and even fairy tales. This allowed the Cannon Group to release a large number of films every year in this heyday. Quantity over quality was the avowed aim at Cannon, and sequels to hit movies were put quickly into production.
11
12	In 1986, the Cannon Group reached its peak, with 43 films in the calendar year alone, several times greater than the output of any of the major studios. Cannon paid top dollar to sign Creator/SylvesterStallone and Creator/ChristopherReeve for starring in two pictures each. To soften the backlash against its B-movies, Cannon commissioned higher-aiming films from such famous directors as Creator/JohnCassavetes, Creator/JohnFrankenheimer, Creator/JeanLucGodard and Creator/FrancoZeffirelli, which were financed by packaging them with their more lucrative films in the pre-sales market. It also received a critical success in the Dutch film ''The Assault'', which gave Golan-Globus both the UsefulNotes/AcademyAward and the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film of the year. It also was able to secure a deal with producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind to make ''Film/SupermanIVTheQuestForPeace'', as well as with Creator/{{Mattel}} and Creator/MarvelComics for the rights to produce film adaptations of their properties (Cannon was able to produce a ''Film/MastersOfTheUniverse'' movie and almost filmed a ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'' movie). They also acquired [[Creator/{{EMI}} Thorn EMI Screen Entertainment]], giving them access to a large library of (mostly British) films and theatre chains throughout Britain.
13
14	However, this was also the beginning of the bad times for the company. The Cannon Group was notoriously stretching its financial resources way too thin. Golan and Globus were being accused of reallocating money allocated for certain films over to other projects, which explained how ''Superman IV'' turned out like it did. The U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC), in its investigation of the Cannon Group, suspected the company of misstating its budgets.
15
16	Due to this turn of events, the company began dismantling some of its Thorn EMI assets, including the library and studio lots. Cannon would ultimately be sold in the late 1980s to Italian financier Giancarlo Parretti, who immediately renamed the company to Pathé Communications in the hopes of buying out [[Creator/{{Pathe}} the French studio of the same name]] (this deal fell through, as his sketchy background raised eyebrows with the French government). This caused a massive restructuring of the company's operations to reduce its debts. At that point, in 1989 Golan left his position in the company over a feud with Parretti and Globus. While Globus continued to work with Pathé, Golan went on to form his own company (21st Century Film Corporation), whose productions included ''Film/CaptainAmerica1990'' and ''Film/DeathWishVTheFaceOfDeath'', which had been stuck in DevelopmentHell at Cannon. Golan also took with him the rights to Cannon's announced but unproduced ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'' movie, which he would ultimately fail to realize due to myriad financial and legal difficulties.
17
18	In 1990, Parretti merged Pathé Communications with [[Creator/MetroGoldwynMayer MGM/UA]]. Most of the Cannon Group's library is now owned by MGM, with some exceptions (mostly the films that were once owned by Thorn EMI). However, Parretti was, again, found to have been a massive fraudster who used false pretenses to get Cannon and Pathé's acquisition of MGM, causing his bank (the French bank Credit Lyonnais) to assume control of MGM-Pathé and, in June 1991, oust both Parretti and Globus from the corporate board. (Parretti would later be convicted of securities fraud.)
19
20	By this time, however, Cannon had been spun off as a new company not directly implicated in the merger fiasco. The new '''Cannon Pictures''' was introduced by Pathé as a label for the sole purpose of distributing low-budget films, only for it to be spun off in November 1990, under Christopher Pearce, a former associate producer from the Golan-Globus era. In 1992, Cannon Pictures merged with Globus's Melrose Entertainment to form '''Cannon Entertainment Group''', which carried on the Cannon name until filing for bankruptcy in December 1994.
21
22	Golan and Globus, meanwhile, reunited in 1996 when Globus and Pearce went on to join Golan at his 21st Century Film Corporation. Golan continued to work as a director and producer until his death on August 8, 2014, while Globus is currently the head of Globus Max, a cinema chain in Israel (until it was bankrupt and sold in 2017 to Elco and rebranded as Hot Cinemas). Also in 2014, the Cannon Group became the subject of the documentary film ''Film/ElectricBoogalooTheWildUntoldStoryOfCannonFilms'', produced by Creator/BrettRatner and written and directed by Australian filmmaker Mark Hartley.
23
24	Many action stars of UsefulNotes/TheEighties who were Cannon regulars included Creator/ChuckNorris (who also starred in one of Cannon's few ventures into television - Cannon Television produced the first few episodes of ''Series/WalkerTexasRanger'' until financial difficulties thanks to Cannon's troubles got in the way, but fortunately Creator/{{CBS}} and [[Creator/ColumbiaPictures Columbia Pictures Television]] agreed to foot the bill and production continued for the next several years), Creator/CharlesBronson, Creator/DolphLundgren, Michael Dudikoff, Sho Kosugi and Creator/MickeyRourke. In addition, the Cannon Group first brought Creator/JeanClaudeVanDamme to worldwide audiences through his role in ''Film/{{Cyborg 1989}}''.
25
26	Throughout the Golan-Globus years, many films of the Cannon Group were released by UsefulNotes/HomeVideoDistributors such as MCA Videocassette, Inc., MGM/UA Home Video, Thorn EMI Video (which Cannon wound up acquiring and briefly renaming ''Creator/{{HBO}}/Cannon Video'', before selling their stake to HBO amid their troubles in 1987) and Media Home Entertainment, among other companies. Today, most of these films are owned by [=StudioCanal=], MGM, or Warner Bros., depending on the film. US TV rights to most of Cannon's films are owned by Creator/{{Paramount}}, which inherited these rights from [[Creator/ParamountGlobal Viacom]]; these rights are currently exercised through Creator/{{CBS}} Media Ventures.
27	-----
28	!!Media produced and/or distributed by the Cannon Group:
29	[[index]]
30	* ''Film/TenToMidnight''
31	* ''Film/AlienFromLA'' (the only film from the Cannon Group to be shown on ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'')
32	* ''Film/TheAmbassador''
33	* ''Film/{{America 3000}}''
34	* ''Film/AmericanCyborgSteelWarrior''
35	* ''Film/AmericanNinja''
36	** ''American Ninja 2: The Confrontation''
37	** ''American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt''
38	** ''American Ninja 4: The Annihilation''
39	** ''American Ninja V''
40	* ''Film/TheApple''
41	* ''Film/TheAssault'' -- Oscar for best foreign language film of 1986
42	* ''Film/TheBarbarians''
43	* ''Film/{{Barfly}}''
44	* ''Film/TheBloodOnSatansClaw''
45	* ''Film/{{Bloodsport}}''
46	* ''Film/{{Bolero}}''
47	* ''Film/TheBorrower''
48	* ''Film/{{Breakin\|1984}}''
49	** ''Film/Breakin2ElectricBoogaloo''
50	* ''Film/CaptainAmerica1990''
51	* ''Film/{{Cobra}}'' (with Creator/WarnerBros)
52	* ''Film/{{Cyborg 1989}}''
53	* ''Film/DeathWish''
54	** ''Film/DeathWishII'' (with Filmways Pictures, before it merged into Creator/OrionPictures)
55	** ''Film/DeathWish3''
56	** ''Film/DeathWish4TheCrackdown''
57	* ''Film/TheDeltaForce''
58	** ''Film/DeltaForce2TheColombianConnection''
59	* ''Film/FiftyFifty1992''
60	* ''Film/{{Firewalker}}''
61	* ''Theatre/FoolForLove''
62	* ''Literature/TheFoolOfTheWorldAndTheFlyingShip'' (with Creator/CosgroveHall)
63	* ''Film/GodsGun''
64	* ''Film/TheHanoiHilton''
65	* ''Film/{{Hellbound}}'' (released in 1994 and the last film from the Cannon Group)
66	* ''Film/Hercules1983'' (with Creator/MetroGoldwynMayer)
67	* ''Film/TheHitman''
68	* ''Film/HouseOfTheLongShadows''
69	* ''Film/InvadersFromMars1986''
70	* ''Film/InvasionUSA1985''
71	** ''Film/AvengingForce''
72	* ''Film/Joe1970''
73	* ''Film/{{Kickboxer}}''
74	* ''Theatre/KingLear'' (1987)
75	* ''Film/KingSolomonsMines''
76	* ''Film/KinjiteForbiddenSubjects''
77	* ''Film/Lifeforce1985''
78	* ''Film/{{Link}}''
79	* ''Film/MastersOfTheUniverse''
80	* ''Film/MissingInAction''
81	** ''Missing in Action 2: The Beginning'' (an [[OddlyNamedSequel2ElectricBoogaloo Oddly Named Prequel]] to the first film)
82	** ''Braddock: Missing in Action III''
83	* ''Film/NewYearsEvil''
84	* ''Film/OperationThunderbolt'' (1977) -- Israeli film about the raid on Entebbe Airport
85	* ''Film/OverTheTop'' (with Creator/WarnerBros)
86	* ''Film/{{Pirates}}''[[/index]]
87	* ''Anime/{{Robotech}}: The Movie'' (aka ''Robotech: The Untold Story'') (unreleased film made up of footage from ''Anime/Megazone23'' and ''Anime/SuperDimensionCavalrySouthernCross'' alongside a new ending)[[note]]It was actually completed and was originally intended to get a theatrical release by Cannon Films in 1986, but due to poor test screenings, the film's release was cancelled.[[/note]][[index]]
88	* ''Film/RunawayTrain'' (nominated for three Oscars; Creator/JonVoight and Creator/EricRoberts for acting, and Henry Richardson for film editing)
89	* ''Film/Sahara1983'' (with Creator/MetroGoldwynMayer)
90	* ''Film/ShyPeople''
91	* ''Film/SupermanIVTheQuestForPeace'' (with Creator/WarnerBros)
92	* ''Film/StreetSmart1987'' (a passion project for Creator/ChristopherReeve that they made as part of the deal to acquire ''Superman IV'', Creator/MorganFreeman got a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for it)
93	* ''WesternAnimation/ATaleOfTwoToads'' (with Creator/CosgroveHall; U.S. distriution only)
94	* ''Film/TheLastAmericanVirgin'' (a remake of a pre-Cannon Golan-Globus movie, ''Lemon Popsicle'')
95	* ''Film/TheTexasChainsawMassacre2'' (1986)
96	* ''Theatre/ThatChampionshipSeason''
97	* ''Film/ThunderRun''
98	* ''Film/ToughGuysDontDance''
99	* ''Film/TrainedToKillUSA''
100	* ''Film/TreasureOfTheFourCrowns''
101	* ''Film/TooMuchTheRobotWithAHeart''
102	* ''Film/UnderCover''
103	* ''Film/TheWickedLady'' (1983 version, with Creator/MetroGoldwynMayer)
104	* ''WesternAnimation/{{The Wind in the Willows\|1983}}'' (with Creator/CosgroveHall; U.S. distribution only)
105	[[/index]]

Context Creator / TheCannonGroup