Subsidiary | |
Industry | Film |
Predecessors | |
Founded | April 17, 1924 |
Founder |
Marcus Loew Louis B. Mayer |
Headquarters | Beverly Hills, California, U.S. |
Key people
|
Gary Barber (Chairman and CEO) Jonathan Glickman, President of Film Division |
Products | Motion pictures Television programs |
Parent | MGM Holdings, Inc. |
Divisions |
MGM Television MGM Animation MGM Home Entertainment |
Subsidiaries |
United Artists Corporation Orion Pictures Corporation |
Website | Official website |
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (abbreviated as MGM or M-G-M, also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer or Metro, and for a former interval known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/United Artists, or MGM/UA) is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of feature films and television programs.
Once the largest, most glamorous, and most revered film studio, MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Pictures. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California. It is one of the world's oldest film studios.
In 1971, it was announced that MGM would merge with 20th Century Fox, a plan which never came into fruition. Over the next thirty-nine years, the studio was bought and sold at various points in its history until, on November 3, 2010, MGM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. MGM emerged from bankruptcy on December 20, 2010, at which time the executives of Spyglass Entertainment, Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum, became co-Chairmen and co-CEOs of the holding company of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
MGM was the last studio to convert to sound pictures, but in spite of this fact, from the end of the silent film era through the late 1950s, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the dominant motion picture studio in Hollywood. Always slow to respond to the changing legal, economic, and demographic nature of the motion picture industry during the 1950s and 1960s, and although at times its films did well at the box office, the studio lost significant amounts of money throughout the 1960s. In 1966, MGM was sold to Canadian investor Edgar Bronfman Sr., whose son Edgar Jr. would later buy Universal Studios. Three years later, an increasingly unprofitable MGM was bought by Kirk Kerkorian, who slashed staff and production costs, forced the studio to produce low-budget fare, and then shut down theatrical distribution in 1973. The studio continued to produce five to six films a year that were released through other studios, mostly United Artists. Kerkorian did, however, commit to increased production and an expanded film library when he bought United Artists in 1981.