American Zoetrope
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American Zoetrope (also known as Omni Zoetrope from 1977 to 1980 and Zoetrope Studios from 1980 until 1991) is a privately run American film production company, centered in San Francisco, California and founded by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas.
Opened on December 12, 1969,[1] the studio has produced not only the films of Coppola (including Apocalypse Now, Bram Stoker's Dracula and Tetro), but also George Lucas's pre-Star Wars films THX 1138 and American Graffiti, as well as many others by avant-garde directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Akira Kurosawa, Wim Wenders and Godfrey Reggio. American Zoetrope was an early adopter of digital filmmaking, including some of the earliest uses of HDTV.[2]
Four films produced by American Zoetrope are included in the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films. American Zoetrope-produced films have received 15 Academy Awards and 68 nominations.
History
Initially located in a warehouse at 827[3][4][5] Folsom Street on the second floor of The Automatt building, the company's headquarters have, since 1972,[6] been in the historic Sentinel Building, at 916 Kearny Street in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood.
Coppola named the studio after a zoetrope he was given in the late 1960s by the filmmaker and collector of early film devices, Mogens Skot-Hansen.[7] "Zoetrope" is also the name by which Coppola's quarterly fiction magazine, Zoetrope: All-Story, is often known.
The company was initially based at Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, where he had run until a dispute had emerged in 1970, a year before THX 1138 was released.[8]
In 1972, Coppola partnered with Peter Bogdanovich and William Friedkin to set up The Directors Company at Paramount Pictures, which was affiliated with Zoetrope, and The Conversation was one of the films that came out of the deal.[9] When the effort failed, the company bought out an interest in New York-based film distributor Cinema 5.[10] He later started a new company Coppola-Cinema 7 in 1975, after talks with Cinema 7 failed and set up with a major distributor.[11]
In 1980, the company bought General Service Studios in Hollywood, California, and became Zoetrope Studios, to produce and distribute films, as did later DreamWorks studio.[12][13]
Zoetrope as a whole faced bankruptcy between 1983 and 1992 after losing money on One from the Heart, and shut down its production studio in Hollywood[14][15][16] and returned to being a production company in San Francisco, initially retaining the Zoetrope Studios name, the studio readopting the American Zoetrope name in 1991 with a first-look deal at Columbia Pictures, and Bram Stoker's Dracula became the first film to come out of the pact.[17] Coppola had sold the studio in 1984 to The Singer Family and rechristened as Hollywood Center Studios.[12]
The studio also provided funding for Commercial Pictures, a studio formed by Roman Coppola and Sofia Coppola in 1988, who had produced low-budget feature films, most notably Clownhouse and The Spirit of '76.[18] In the mid-1990s, the company entered into TV movies and miniseries, signing a contract with RHI Entertainment to produce material.[12] In 1997, the company signed a deal with PolyGram Television to finance television projects.[19]
In 1999, it signed a deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) for a first-look financing and production agreement.[20] In 2000, it signed a ten-year financing pact with VCL Film + Medien to handle foreign sales of their own titles.[21]
By 2007, ownership of American Zoetrope had been passed to Coppola's son and daughter, directors Roman Coppola and Sofia Coppola.[22]
In 2010, Lionsgate announced a deal to distribute American Zoetrope films, including classics like The Conversation and Apocalypse Now, in North America on DVD, Blu-ray, electronic-sell-through, VOD as well as broadcast distribution rights.[23] The only movies from the Coppola canon that will not be released as part of the pact are The Godfather trilogy, which is owned by Paramount.[24]
Zoetrope.com, the Coppola family's website, was created around 1996[25] and became an online community for writers. In 2016, Francis Ford Coppola announced its relaunch as a "virtual studio".[26]
In 2024, American Zoetrope earned its first Tony Award for Best Musical as one of the producers of the 2023 stage musical adaptation of The Outsiders.[27]
Filmography
Feature films
Television series
| Year | Title | Creator | Company | Credit | Network | Notes | References |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | The Outsiders | characters by: S.E. Hinton developed by: S.E. Hinton Joe Byrne Jeb Rosebrook |
Zoetrope Studios | Production Company | Fox | co-production with Papazian-Hirsch Entertainment | |
| 1997 | The Odyssey | Andrei Konchalovsky based on Odyssey by: Homer |
American Zoetrope | Production Company (as American Zoetrope San Francisco) | NBC | miniseries; co-production with Hallmark Entertainment | [28] |
| 1998 | Moby Dick | Anton Diether Franc Roddam Benedict Fitzgerald based on Moby-Dick by: Herman Melville |
Production Company | USA Network | miniseries; co-production with Hallmark Entertainment, Nine Network Australia and USA Pictures | [28] | |
| 1998–2001 | First Wave | Chris Brancato | Sci-Fi Channel | co-production with Sugar Entertainment | [28] | ||
| 2003 | Platinum | John Ridley Sofia Coppola |
UPN | co-production with The Greenblatt/Janollari Studio, International Famous Players Radio Picture Corporation and Eye Productions | [36] | ||
| 2004–2007 | The 4400 | René Echevarria Scott Peters |
USA Network | co-production with Renegade 83, Viacom Productions (season 1), Paramount Network Television (season 2) and CBS Paramount Network Television (seasons 3–4) | |||
| 2014–2018 | Mozart in the Jungle | based on Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music by: Blair Tindall developed by: Roman Coppola Jason Schwartzman Alex Timbers Paul Weitz |
Amazon Video | co-production with Depth of Field, Picrow and Amazon Studios | [28] |
Cafe Zoetrope
In the building lobby, Coppola operates a small Italian café, Cafe Zoetrope, featuring Inglenook Estate wine and memorabilia from his films.[37] Earlier, the building had been the location of Enrico Banducci's "hungry i" nightclub.
The neighborhood is well known for its cafes and its writers. Coppola wrote much of the screenplay for The Godfather in the nearby Caffe Trieste and Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Books is located up Columbus Avenue from the Sentinel Building.
Further reading
- Davies, Tom S., "Impressive Failures: Mavericks of Film Authorship and the Impossibility of Success in Hollywood" (2017). City University of New York Academic Works.
References
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- ↑ Fog City Mavericks. Starz, Englewood, CO, USA. June 15, 2011. Television.
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- ↑ Coppola stated this in an interview with Harry Knowles for Ain't It Cool News published on May 8, 2007.
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- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap aq ar as at au av aw ax ay az ba bb bc bd be bf bg bh bi bj bk bl bm bn bo bp bq "American Zoetrope: Films", zoetrope.com. Retrieved 2023-07-17.
- ↑ American Zoetrope [us]
- ↑ Zoetrope Studios [us]
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External links
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- Pages with script errors
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- American Zoetrope
- American companies established in 1969
- Film production companies of the United States
- Film distributors of the United States
- Entertainment companies based in California
- Companies based in San Francisco
- Cinema of the San Francisco Bay Area
- Francis Ford Coppola
- George Lucas
- North Beach, San Francisco
- Mass media companies established in 1969
- 1969 establishments in California