New Line Productions, Inc., doing business as New Line Cinema, is an American film and television production company owned by Skydance Corporation. The studio was founded on June 18, 1967, by Robert Shaye in New York City, as a foreign and art film distributor. In 1994, New Line was acquired by the Turner Broadcasting System, which in turn was acquired by Time Warner in 1996. In 2008, New Line was folded into Warner Bros. Pictures. Prior to the integration into Warner Bros. Pictures, the headquarters were located in Los Angeles, California at 116 N Robertson Blvd. Since then, New Line Cinema operates out of offices at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank.
New Line Cinema is currently one of the four live-action film studios within the Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, the others being Warner Bros. Pictures, Warner Bros. Clockwork, and a minority stake in Spyglass Media Group. The studio has been nicknamed "The House that Freddy Built" due to the success of the Nightmare on Elm Street horror film series. However, its most successful property was a film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien with considerable commercial success and numerous Academy Awards.
New Line Cinema was established in 1967 by the then 27-year-old Robert Shaye as a film distribution company, supplying foreign and art films for college campuses in the United States. Shaye operated New Line Cinema's offices out of his apartment at 14th Street and Second Avenue in New York City. One of the company's early successes was its distribution of the 1936 anti-cannabis propaganda film Reefer Madness, which became a cult hit on American college campuses in the early 1970s. New Line also released many classic foreign-language films, like Stay As You Are, Immoral Tales and Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (which became the first New Line film to win an Oscar). The studio has also released many of the films of John Waters.
In 1976, New Line Cinema secured funding to produce its first full-length feature, Stunts (1977), directed by Mark L. Lester. Although not considered a critical success, the film performed well commercially on the international market and on television.
In 1980, Shaye's law school classmate Michael Lynne became outside counsel and adviser to the company and renegotiated its debt.
In 1983, Bryanston Distributing Company, the company that first distributed the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, lost the rights to that film, and the rights reverted to the original owners. New Line Cinema bought the rights and re-released the film to theatres that same year. It became very successful for the studio.
New Line Cinema expanded its film production in the early 1980s, producing or co-producing films including Polyester, directed by John Waters, and the horror film Alone in the Dark. Polyester was one of the first films to introduce a novelty cinema experience named Odorama, where members of the audience were provided with a set of "scratch and sniff" cards to be scratched and sniffed at specific times during the film, which provided an additional sensory connection to the viewed image. In 1983, Lynne joined the board. In 1984, Dawn Altyn and Jeff Youngs joined New Line Cinema, respectively as sales manager, eastern and southern divisions of New Line Distribution, and national print controller of the studio, to distribute new projects.
1980s: Beginning success with A Nightmare on Elm Street
A Nightmare on Elm Street was produced and released by New Line Cinema in 1984. The resulting franchise was New Line Cinema's first commercially successful series, leading the company to be nicknamed "The House that Freddy Built". The film was made on a budget of $1.8 million and grossed over $57 million. A year later, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge was released, and grossed $3.3 million in its first three days of release and over $30 million at the US box office. In 1986, the company went public, and held 1,613,000 shares of common stock.
With the success of the Elm Street franchise, New Line Cinema made moves to expand their business. This included a revamping of their distribution network, the sale of their films into broadcast syndication and pay-television (via Embassy Communications and Universal Pay Television, respectively), and the creation of an international distribution arm.
The third film in the series, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, was released in 1987, the studio's first national release, and opened at number one, grossing $8.9 million for the weekend, a record for an independent film at the time, and went on to gross almost $45 million at the US box office. A further six films have been made. The first six grossed $500 million worldwide and the next three $250 million, for a total of $750 million. In 1986, the film Critters was released, which led to another long-running horror film franchise for the studio. In 1988, New Line released a heavy metal-focused sequel to the acclaimed 1981 punk rock documentary The Decline of Western Civilization, titled The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years. In 1989, the company entered into a distribution partnership with CineTel Films, where CineTel handled overall rights, and New Line would handle marketing and distribution of its titles.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and expansion (1990–1994)
In 1990, Lynne became president and chief operating officer, with Shaye as chairman and chief executive officer. The same year, New Line Cinema released Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles which became the highest-grossing independent film of all-time with a gross of $135 million in the United States and Canada, until it was surpassed by The Blair Witch Project (1999). It was followed by a sequel, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991) which was the second highest-grossing with a gross of $78 million in the United States and Canada. A third, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III followed in 1993. In 1990, New Line released the popular comedy House Party, which led to a long running film series. In 1992, New Line released the Drew Barrymore erotic thriller Poison Ivy, which helped launch another film series, as it spawned two direct-to-video sequels in 1996 and 1997, as well as a made for television sequel in 2008. In 1992, New Line also acquired the rights to the Friday the 13th horror franchise, with the franchise having previously had seven films released by Paramount Pictures in the 1980s. The franchise had started generating declining box office returns, and New Line's ultimate goal in acquiring the rights was to eventually have a film focusing on both Jason Voorhees (the antagonist of the franchise) and Freddy Krueger (the antagonist of the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise). This planned film received several delays and wasn't released until 2003, with two Friday the 13th films without Freddy Krueger being released by New Line in 1993 and 2001. After acquiring the rights to Friday the 13th, New Line were involved in a bidding war for the rights to Halloween, another horror franchise. They lost out to Dimension Films, a horror/genre film-focused subsidiary of Miramax. Beginning in 1995, Dimension went on to release several Halloween films.
In July 1990, Carolco Pictures entered into a joint venture with New Line Cinema to start Seven Arts, a distribution company which primarily released much of Carolco's low-budget output as opposed to their high-budget films which were released by TriStar Pictures. In November, New Line Cinema purchased a 52% stake in the television production company RHI Entertainment (now Halcyon Studios), which would later be sold to Hallmark Cards in 1994.
In early 1991, Fine Line Features was set up as a wholly owned subsidiary headed by Ira Deutchman and released films including Jane Campion's An Angel at My Table and Gus van Sant's My Own Private Idaho. That May, New Line Cinema purchased the home video and foreign rights to 600 films held by Sultan Entertainment Holdings (a.k.a. Nelson Entertainment). The deal also included an 11-film distribution deal with Castle Rock Entertainment. On November 27, New Line Cinema purchased Sultan outright.