Franchise Pictures
 |
|
| Industry | Independent film studio |
|---|---|
| Fate | Bankruptcy |
| Founded | 1998 |
| Defunct | 2007 |
|
Key people
|
Elie Samaha Andrew Stevens |
| Subsidiaries | Franchise Interactive Phoenician Entertainment |
Franchise Pictures LLC was an independent motion picture production and distribution company with Warner Bros. Entertainment, founded by Elie Samaha and Andrew Stevens. They were known for their production in the action film genre. The company also had a short-lived video game arm, Franchise Interactive.
As of 2009, the Franchise Pictures library, along with that of ThinkFilm, is now owned by Orange Holdings LLC. The Franchise Library is currently distributed worldwide by Revolution Studios through Park Circus.
Franchise Pictures is mostly known for its reputation on several films that received mostly negative reviews. Both Battlefield Earth and Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever were universally panned and are considered to be two of the worst films of all time. However a few of their films (The Boondock Saints and The Whole Nine Yards for example) have garnered a strong cult following.
Following the financial failure of Battlefield Earth and other films independently produced by Franchise Pictures, The Wall Street Journal reported that the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation was probing "the question of whether some independent motion picture companies have vastly inflated the budget of films in an effort to scam investors". In December 2000 the German-based Intertainment AG filed a lawsuit alleging that Franchise Pictures had fraudulently inflated budgets in films including Battlefield Earth, which Intertainment had helped to finance. Intertainment had agreed to pay 47% of the production costs of several films in exchange for European distribution rights, but ended up paying for between 60% and 90% of the costs instead. The company alleged that Franchise had defrauded it to the tune of over $75 million by systematically submitting "grossly fraudulent and inflated budgets".
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