Carolco Pictures
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| Public | |
| Traded as | NASDAQ: CRCO |
| Industry | Entertainment |
| Successor | C2 Pictures |
| Founded | 1976 |
| Founders |
Mario F. Kassar Andrew G. Vajna |
| Headquarters | Boca Raton, Florida, United States |
| Products | Motion pictures |
| Revenue | Unknown |
| Unknown | |
| Divisions | Carolco Television Productions Orbis Communications |
| Subsidiaries | Seven Arts (joint venture with New Line Cinema) |
| Website | carolcopictures |
Carolco Pictures, Inc. is an American independent motion picture production company that, within a decade, went from producing such blockbuster successes as Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, and the first three films of the Rambo series to being bankrupted by box office bombs such as Cutthroat Island and Showgirls. The company's trademarks were purchased by another interest who renamed its established company under the Carolco name.
The company was founded through the partnership of two film investors, Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna. The two were hailed by Newsweek as some of the most successful independent producers. By the age of 25, Vajna went from wig-maker to the owner of two Hong Kong theaters. Then, Vajna ventured into the production and distribution of feature films. One of Vajna's early productions was a 1973 martial-arts film entitled The Deadly China Doll which made $3.7 million worldwide from a $100,000 budget. Vajna was already a film sales agent in the Middle East by the time he turned 18.
Their goal was to focus on film sales; eventually it went into financing low-budget films. Their earliest films were produced by American International Pictures and ITC Entertainment with Carolco's financial support, and co-produced with Canadian theater magnate Garth Drabinsky. The name "Carolco" was purchased from a defunct company based in Panama, and according to Kassar, "it has no meaning."
Carolco's first major success was First Blood (1982), an adaptation of David Morrell's novel. Kassar and Vajna took a great risk buying the film rights to the novel (for $385,000) and used the help of European bank loans to cast Sylvester Stallone as the lead character, Vietnam War veteran John Rambo, after having worked with him on the John Huston film Escape to Victory (1981). The risk paid off after First Blood made $120 million worldwide, and placed Carolco among the major players in Hollywood.
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Wikipedia