21st Century Film Corporation

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The 21st Century Film Corporation Inc.

Fate	Bankruptcy
Founded	1971 est.
Defunct	1996
Headquarters	7000 West Third Street, Los Angeles, CA 90048, U.S.A.
Key people	Menahem Golan (CEO), Ami Artzi & Giancarlo Parretti
Industry	Motion Picture Production & Releasing
Products	Motion Pictures
Parent	Received limited funding from The Cannon Group, Inc.

21st Century Film Corporation was a small-scale theatrical distribution company formed sometime in the early 1970s as a production company and distributor.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Rights to Marvel Comics characters 1.2 Closure 2 References

[edit] History

The company had largely gone unnoticed for nearly twenty years when sometime in the late '80s, while filing for bankruptcy, it was purchased by Giancarlo Parretti. Parretti had also recently purchased Cannon Films, and he eventually handed 21st Century Film Corporation over to Israeli filmmaker Menahem Golan as part of Golan's severance package from Cannon.

Golan's goal was to release high-quality motion pictures to the American and worldwide film audiences, but 21st Century only enjoyed small-scale success releasing low-budget, art-house films like Eraserhead, as well as remakes of Phantom of the Opera and Night of the Living Dead.

[edit] Rights to Marvel Comics characters

In 1990, 21st Century bought the film rights to two Marvel Comics heroes, Captain America and Spider-Man. Captain America was filmed and was given only a limited theatrical release worldwide, despite its major budget. 21st Century eventually lost the rights to filming Spider-Man.^[1]

[edit] Closure

The company released a few more movies including, Deadly Heroes and most notably Death Wish V: The Face of Death, which was not only the last in the series but Charles Bronson's final theatrical film.

The studio encountered serious financial troubles and eventually went bankrupt in 1996; Golan later returned to his native Israel and formed New Cannon, Inc.

[edit] References