Summit Entertainment
 |
|
| Subsidiary | |
| Founded | July 26, 1991 |
| Founder |
Bernd Eichinger Arnon Milchan Andrew G. Vajna |
| Headquarters | Santa Monica, California |
|
Key people
|
Rob Friedman Patrick Wachsberger Bob Hayward |
| Products | Motion pictures |
| Parent | Lionsgate |
| Divisions | Summit Entertainment Records Summit Premiere |
| Website | www |
Summit Entertainment LLC is an American film production and distribution company. It is owned by Lionsgate and is headquartered in Santa Monica, California.
Summit Entertainment was founded in 1991 by film producers Bernd Eichinger, Arnon Milchan, and Andrew G. Vajna, to handle film sales in foreign countries. Summit later expanded and was launched in 1993 by Patrick Wachsberger, Bob Hayward and David Garrett under the name Summit Entertainment LP as a production, distribution, and sales organization. By 1995 they were producing and co-financing films, and by 1997 they started fully financing films. Among the company's early successes was American Pie, which Summit distributed outside of English-speaking territories. In 2007, it became an independent film production company, Summit Entertainment, with the addition of Rob Friedman, a former executive at Paramount Pictures. The new company added major development, production, acquisitions, marketing and distribution branches with a financing deal led by Merrill Lynch and other investors giving it access to over $1 billion in financing. Summit Entertainment's films are also distributed theatrically and on home video in Spain, the Netherlands and in Canada by Entertainment One.
After a string of flops including P2, Never Back Down and Sex Drive, Summit found success in November 2008 with the release of Twilight, a teen romance about vampires based on the best-selling book of the same name by Stephenie Meyer that made $408,773,703 worldwide. In the spring of 2009, Summit released Knowing, the company's second movie to open #1 at the box office and made $182,492,056 worldwide. In November 2009, Summit released the sequel to Twilight titled The Twilight Saga: New Moon, also based on the popular novel by Stephenie Meyer, breaking box office records for first weekend grosses at the time, taking in $142,839,137 in the first three days (which is #13 on the all-time opening grosses list). In June 2010 Summit released the third film of the Twilight series, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. It broke a midnight screening record of over $30 million and set a one-day Wednesday record of $68.5 million but failed to surpass the one-day tally of $72 million set by New Moon. It became the first movie in the series to cross the $300 million mark domestically.
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