A2 Columbia Pictures Industries Research

Columbia Pictures Industries is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies in the world, a member of the so-called Big Six. It was one of the so-called Little Three among the eight major film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age.

The studio was founded in 1919 by brothers Jack and Harry Cohn and Joe Brandt as Cohn-Brandt-Cohn Film Sales. Its first feature film was released in August 1922. It adopted the Columbia Pictures name in 1924 and went public two years later. Although a minor player in Hollywood in its early years, Columbia began to grow in the late 1920s, spurred by a successful association with director Frank Capra.

In the 1930s, Columbia's major contract stars were Jean Arthur and Cary Grant (who was shared with RKO Pictures). In the 1940s, Rita Hayworth became the studio's premier star and propelled their fortunes into the late 1950s. Rosalind Russell, Glenn Ford, and William Holden also became major stars at the studio.

In 1982, the studio was purchased by Coca-Cola; that same year it launched TriStar Pictures as a joint venture with HBO and CBS. Five years later, Coca-Cola spun off Columbia, which merged with Tri-Star to create Columbia Pictures Entertainment. After a brief period of independence with Coca-Cola maintaining a financial interest, the combined studio was acquired by Sony in 1989.

In 2002, Columbia broke the record for biggest domestic theatrical gross, with a tally of $1.575 billion, coincidentally breaking its own record of $1.256 billion set in 1997, which was raised by such blockbusters as Spider-Man, Men in Black II and xXx. The studio was also the most lucrative studio of 2004, with over $1.338 billion dollars in the domestic box office with titles such as Spider-Man 2, 50 First Dates and The Grudge.

In 2006 Columbia helped with such blockbusters as: The Da Vinci Code, The Pursuit of Happyness and Casino Royale, not only finished the year in first place, but it reached an all time record high sum of $1.711 billion, which was an all-time yearly record for any studio until Warner Bros. surpassed it in 2009.