Anchor Bay Entertainment
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Anchor Bay Entertainment is a home entertainment company and a division of Starz Media, which is a unit of Starz, LLC.
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Licensed content
Films
- Most of the libraries of Embassy Pictures, Rankin-Bass, EMI Films, HBO Films, and Alexander Salkind (via StudioCanal);
- Davis-Panzer Productions (The Osterman Weekend)
- George Harrison's Handmade Films (Time Bandits, Mona Lisa, etc.);
- Moustapha Akkad's Trancas International Pictures (production company behind the Halloween movie series);
- New World Pictures (The Boys Next Door, Children of the Corn, Girls Just Want to Have Fun, Heathers, Godzilla 1985, etc.);
- Overture Films, also owned by Starz Media;
- Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment (The Bears and I, Big Red, The Black Hole, The Castaway Cowboy, The Cat From Outer Space, Candleshoe, Charlie, The Lonesome Cougar, Condorman, The Devil and Max Devlin, The Great Locomotive Chase, The Happiest Millionaire, The Island at the Top of the World, The Last Flight of Noah's Ark, The Legend of Lobo, The Littlest Horse Thieves, Midnight Madness, Napoleon and Samantha, Never Cry Wolf, Nikki, Wild Dog of the North, The North Avenue Irregulars, One Little Indian, One Magic Christmas, Return to Oz, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Tex, Unidentified Flying Oddball, The Watcher in the Woods and ABC Pictures International/ABC Motion Pictures films), although licensing on some of these films has returned to Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment.
Horror films
Anchor Bay Entertainment is also noted for the release of the Evil Dead film trilogy on DVD, in numerous editions. Army of Darkness for example, had been released in both a regular and limited edition set that featured the director's cut of the film. Since then, the director's cut has been re-released on two separate occasions in addition to a two-disc "Boomstick Edition" of the film as well. Until Anchor Bay released The Evil Dead on VHS and DVD it was previously unavailable on video from a major label.
Also among their more profitable releases has been George Romero's Living Dead series. Anchor Bay Entertainment has distribution rights for the middle two films in the Romero tetralogy: Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead.
Like the Evil Dead trilogy, the "Living Dead" series has seen many editions of the films on DVD. Dawn of the Dead has itself seen several releases on DVD, the most extra feature-laden being the "Ultimate Edition" in late 2004.
An "Evil Dead" 3-Disc Ultimate Edition DVD was released in December 2007.
The company has been screen-testing Rob Zombie's El Superbeasto for a 2009 release.
Anchor Bay has also released most of Dario Argento's films including:
TV series
The following series were formerly distributed by Anchor Bay up until 2009, but have since been discontinued and are now out of print.
- 21 Jump Street
- Doogie Howser, M.D.
- Hercules: The Legendary Journeys
- Highlander: The Series
- Hunter
- Profit
- Renegade
- Silk Stalkings
- The Commish
- The Greatest American Hero
- Titus
- Xena: Warrior Princess
Special interest
In addition to feature films, Anchor Bay Entertainment distributes special interest titles, including children's video series, like Bobby's World. They also until 2008, distributed Thomas & Friends videos. Thomas has reached platinum-selling status and in 2004 ranks consistently on the VideoScan ranking top 50 chart of children's weekly video sales. Rights to the Thomas DVD's now belong to Lionsgate. The company also has a top market share for fitness videos such as the "Crunch" and "For Dummies" series.
Production company
As a full-fledged production company, they handle television syndication of Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers and Halloween V: The Revenge of Michael Myers (which they also hold the video rights to), and have recently entered in-house production of theatrical films.