StudioCanal (aka Le Studio Canal, Canal Plus, Canal + Distribution, and Canal+ Image S.A.), is a French-based production and distribution company that owns the third-largest film library in the world.
The company was founded in 1996 by Pierre Lescure . The original function was to focus on French and European productions. Over the next four years, StudioCanal began to acquire film libraries from studios that either went defunct or had merged with StudioCanal.
It was not very long before StudioCanal began producing in-house productions such as Billy Elliot (2000), Bully (2001), and Bridget Jones' Diary (2001).
Today, StudioCanal is a division of Vivendi Universal, and has a catalog that includes the film libraries of Carolco Pictures (Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Rambo: First Blood Part II, Chaplin, etc.), Embassy Pictures (The Graduate, The Producers, etc.), the Alexander Salkind pictures not owned by Warner Bros. (including Supergirl and ), the EMI Films library (Highlander, Death on the Nile, etc.) and the Lumiere Pictures and Television output (including The Third Man and The Avengers).
In North America, StudioCanal does not have a formal distribution unit per se, relying on other studios and video companies to handle their product.
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