Orion Pictures Corporation was an American movie production company, formed in 1978 as a joint venture between Warner Bros. Pictures and three former top-level executives of United Artists. UA co-chairmen Arthur Krim and Robert Benjamin along with chief executive officer Eric Pleskow had resigned after disputes with UA's then parent, Transamerica. Orion's first films included 10, Time After Time, Caddyshack, Arthur, Sharkey's Machine, Monty Python's Life of Brian, and A Little Romance.
In 1982, Orion merged with Filmways, Inc. (which had produced well-remembered TV shows in the late 1960s, such as The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Mister Ed and The Addams Family, but was a second-string studio by the late 1970s and mainly interesting for its ownership of American International Pictures), and became an independent company, in addition to entering television production and distribution. It also introduced a new logo, featuring an animated depiction of the constellation Orion. During the 1980s, its output included Woody Allen films, Hollywood blockbusters such as the first Terminator film and the RoboCop films, cult movies such as Blow Out and Something Wild and Academy Award winners such as Amadeus and Platoon. Dances With Wolves and The Silence of the Lambs would also earn many Academy Awards in the early 1990s for Orion. In 1986, billionaire John Kluge invested in the company as a favor to Krim, and by 1988 his Metromedia organization had become majority owner.
In 1983, Orion Pictures introduced art-house division Orion Classics. The subsidiary presented mostly foreign-language films such as Babette's Feast and Pedro Almodovar's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and U.S. independent films such as Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train and Richard Linklater's Slacker, as well as classic movies from American International Pictures and Filmways.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Orion had severe financial problems, and declared bankruptcy in 1992. The studio entered into a profit sharing deal to secure distribution of the film version of The Addams Family that meant it saw little of the profit while the company's other lucrative properties such as the Terminator franchise went to other studios (The Addams Family would eventually be distributed by Paramount Pictures). Silence of the Lambs was almost rejected due to lack of funding, and several other projects in production at the time, such as Blue Sky, Car 54 Where Are You? and Clifford, had their releases delayed by three years (from 1991 to 1994) because of the bankruptcy filing. Orion was eventually able to exit bankruptcy in 1996, but few of the films released during the four years under bankruptcy protection made much of a critical or commercial impact.
As a result of Orion's financial troubles, its television division was sold to ABC and became ABC Productions (which produced the television series The Commish and My So-Called Life), although Orion continued to retain ownership of all its television output up to the time of the bankruptcy. Coincidentally, ABC held the broadcast rights to most of Orion's theatrical library during the bankruptcy period.
In 1997, Metromedia sold Orion (as well as The Samuel Goldwyn Company and Motion Picture Corporation of America) to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with the deal finalized in late 1998. Orion Classics was folded into United Artists, which took over all future projects from Orion Classics. Orion remains an in-name-only subsidiary of MGM. All Orion releases (mostly of the AIP and Filmways backlogs, as well as most of their own post-1982 library, and the television output originally produced and distributed under the Orion name) now bear the MGM name, though in most cases, the 1980s Orion logo is retained (or added on, in the case of the Filmways and AIP libraries). Notable exceptions are two Saul Zaentz films, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Amadeus; both of which are now owned by Warner Bros., another is First Blood, which was produced by Carolco Pictures and currently belongs to StudioCanal. Most ancillary rights to Orion's back catalog from the 1978–1981 joint venture period remains under the control of Time Warner, but most of the rest of Orion's film releases are owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment through Columbia TriStar Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and United Artists.