Company type | Production company |
---|---|
Industry | Motion pictures Television |
Founded | December 12, 1969 |
Founder | Francis Ford Coppola George Lucas |
Headquarters | , |
Owner | Francis Ford Coppola Roman Coppola Sofia Coppola |
Website | zoetrope |
American Zoetrope (also known as Omni Zoetrope from 1977 to 1980 and Zoetrope Studios from 1980 until 1990) is a privately run American film production company, centered in San Francisco, California and founded by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas.
Opened on December 12, 1969, [1] the studio has produced not only the films of Coppola (including Apocalypse Now , Bram Stoker's Dracula and Tetro ), but also George Lucas's pre- Star Wars film THX 1138 , as well as many others by avant-garde directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Akira Kurosawa, Wim Wenders and Godfrey Reggio. American Zoetrope was an early adopter of digital filmmaking, including some of the earliest uses of HDTV. [2]
Four films produced by American Zoetrope are included in the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films. American Zoetrope-produced films have received 15 Academy Awards and 68 nominations.
Initially located in a warehouse at 827 [3] [4] [5] Folsom Street on the second floor of The Automatt building, the company's headquarters have, since 1972, [6] been in the historic Sentinel Building, at 916 Kearny Street in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood.
Coppola named the studio after a zoetrope he was given in the late 1960s by the filmmaker and collector of early film devices, Mogens Skot-Hansen. [7] "Zoetrope" is also the name by which Coppola's quarterly fiction magazine, Zoetrope: All-Story , is often known.
In 1980, the company bought General Service Studios in Hollywood, California, and became Zoetrope Studios, to produce and distribute films, as did later DreamWorks studio. [8] [9]
In 1999, it signed a deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for a first-look financing and production agreement. [10] In 2000, it signed a ten-year financing pact with VCL Film + Medien to handle foreign sales of their own titles. [11]
By 2007, ownership of American Zoetrope had been passed to Coppola's son and daughter, directors Roman Coppola and Sofia Coppola. [12]
In 2010, Lionsgate announced a deal to distribute American Zoetrope films, including classics like The Conversation and Apocalypse Now, in North America on DVD, Blu-ray, electronic-sell-through, VOD as well as broadcast distribution rights. [13] The only movies from the Coppola canon that won't be released as part of the pact are The Godfather trilogy, which is owned by Paramount. [14]
Zoetrope.com, the Coppola family's website, was created around 1996 and became an online community for writers. In 2016, Francis Ford Coppola announced its relaunch as a "virtual studio". [15]
In 2024, American Zoetrope earned its first Tony Award for Best Musical as one of the producers of the 2023 stage musical adaptation of The Outsiders . [16]
Year | Title | Creator | Company | Credit | Network | Notes | References |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1990 | The Outsiders | characters by: S.E. Hinton developed by: S.E. Hinton Joe Byrne Jeb Rosebrook | Zoetrope Studios | Production Company | Fox | co-production with Papazian-Hirsch Entertainment | |
1997 | The Odyssey | Andrei Konchalovsky based on Odyssey by: Homer | American Zoetrope | Production Company (as American Zoetrope San Francisco) | NBC | miniseries; co-production with Hallmark Entertainment | [17] |
1998 | Moby Dick | Anton Diether Franc Roddam Benedict Fitzgerald based on Moby-Dick by: Herman Melville | Production Company | USA Network | miniseries; co-production with Hallmark Entertainment, Nine Network Australia and USA Pictures | [17] | |
1998–2001 | First Wave | Chris Brancato | Sci-Fi Channel | co-production with Sugar Entertainment | [17] | ||
2003 | Platinum | John Ridley Sofia Coppola | UPN | co-production with The Greenblatt/Janollari Studio, International Famous Players Radio Picture Corporation and Eye Productions | [25] | ||
2004–2007 | The 4400 | René Echevarria Scott Peters | USA Network | co-production with Renegade 83, Viacom Productions (season 1), Paramount Network Television (season 2) and CBS Paramount Network Television (seasons 3–4) | |||
2014–2018 | Mozart in the Jungle | based on Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music by: Blair Tindall developed by: Roman Coppola Jason Schwartzman Alex Timbers Paul Weitz | Amazon Video | co-production with Depth of Field, Picrow and Amazon Studios | [17] |
In the building lobby, Coppola operates a small Italian café, Cafe Zoetrope, featuring Inglenook Estate wine and memorabilia from his films. [26] Earlier, the building had been the location of Enrico Banducci's "hungry i" nightclub.
The neighborhood is well known for its cafes and its writers. Coppola wrote much of the screenplay for The Godfather in the nearby Caffe Trieste and Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Books is located up Columbus Avenue from the Sentinel Building.
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is considered one of the leading figures of the New Hollywood film movement of the 1960s and 1970s and is widely considered one of the greatest directors of all time. Coppola is the recipient of five Academy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, two Palmes d'Or, and a British Academy Film Award (BAFTA).
The Cotton Club is a 1984 American musical crime drama film co-written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and based on James Haskins' 1977 book of the same name. The story centers on the Cotton Club, a Harlem jazz club in the 1930s. The film stars Richard Gere, Gregory Hines, Diane Lane and Lonette McKee, with Bob Hoskins, James Remar, Nicolas Cage, Allen Garfield, Gwen Verdon, Fred Gwynne and Laurence Fishburne in supporting roles.
Tucker: The Man and His Dream is a 1988 American biographical comedy-drama film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, starring Jeff Bridges as inventor Preston Tucker. The film recounts Tucker's story and his attempt to produce and market the Tucker 48, which was met with scandal between the Big Three automobile manufacturers and accusations of stock fraud from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Joan Allen, Martin Landau, Elias Koteas, Frederic Forrest and Christian Slater appear in supporting roles. For his performance, Landau was nominated for the Academy Award and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor.
The Godfather is a 1972 American epic gangster film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who co-wrote the screenplay with Mario Puzo, based on Puzo's best-selling 1969 novel of the same title. The film stars an ensemble cast including Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard Castellano, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte, and Diane Keaton. It is the first installment in The Godfather trilogy, chronicling the Corleone family under patriarch Vito Corleone (Brando) from 1945 to 1955. It focuses on the transformation of his youngest son, Michael Corleone (Pacino), from reluctant family outsider to ruthless mafia boss.
One from the Heart is a 1982 American musical romantic drama film co-written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Frederic Forrest, Teri Garr, Raul Julia, Nastassja Kinski, Lainie Kazan, and Harry Dean Stanton. Set entirely in Las Vegas and made independently by Coppola's own Zoetrope Studios, the film was a critical and commercial failure.
Columbus Tower, also known as the Sentinel Building, is a mixed-use building in San Francisco, California, completed in 1907. The distinctive copper-green Flatiron style structure is bounded by Columbus Avenue, Kearny Street, and Jackson Street; straddling the North Beach, Chinatown, and Financial District neighborhoods of the city. Much of the building is occupied by film studio American Zoetrope, and the ground floor houses a cafe named after the company. The Sentinel Building is listed as San Francisco Designated Landmark No. 33.
Dean Tavoularis is an American motion picture production designer whose work appeared in numerous box office hits such as The Godfather films, Apocalypse Now, The Brink's Job, One from the Heart, and Bonnie and Clyde.
Filmmaker, or "Filmmaker: a diary by george lucas", is a 32-minute documentary made in 1968 by George Lucas about the making of Francis Ford Coppola's 1969 film The Rain People.
Lionsgate Films is a Canadian-American film production and film distribution studio founded in Canada in 1962. It is now a division of Lionsgate Studios and headquartered in Santa Monica.
Frederick Ried Roos was an American film producer and casting director. He was best known for his contributions to the New Hollywood movement, particularly through his collaborations with director Francis Ford Coppola. He won the Academy Award for Best Picture for The Godfather: Part II (1974), with a second nomination for Apocalypse Now (1979).
The Godfather is a trilogy of American crime films directed by Francis Ford Coppola inspired by the 1969 novel of the same name by Italian American author Mario Puzo. The films follow the trials of the fictional Italian American mafia Corleone family whose patriarch, Vito Corleone, rises to be a major figure in American organized crime. His youngest son, Michael Corleone, becomes his successor. The films were distributed by Paramount Pictures and released in 1972, 1974, and 1990. The series achieved success at the box office, with the films earning between $430 and $517 million worldwide. The Godfather and The Godfather Part II are both seen by many as two of the greatest films of all time. The series is heavily awarded, winning 9 out of 28 total Academy Award nominations.
Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American epic war film produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The screenplay, co-written by Coppola, John Milius, and Michael Herr, is loosely inspired by the 1899 novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, with the setting changed from late 19th-century Congo to the Vietnam War. The film follows a river journey from South Vietnam into Cambodia undertaken by Captain Willard, who is on a secret mission to assassinate Colonel Kurtz, a renegade Special Forces officer who is accused of murder and presumed insane. The ensemble cast also features Robert Duvall, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Sam Bottoms, Laurence Fishburne and Dennis Hopper, and Harrison Ford.
Barry M. Malkin was an American film editor with about 30 film credits. He is noted for his extended collaboration with director Francis Ford Coppola, having edited most of Coppola's films from 1969 to 1997. In particular, Malkin worked with Coppola on four of the component and compilation films of the Godfather trilogy, though he did not edit the first film, The Godfather. Film critic Roger Ebert called the first two Godfather films a "cultural bedrock".
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and film composer whose career spans more than fifty years. Coppola has directed twenty-three feature films to date.
Lisa Fruchtman is an American film and television editor, and documentary director with about 25 film credits. Fruchtman won the Academy Award for Best Film Editing for The Right Stuff (1983). With her brother, Rob Fruchtman, she produced, directed, and edited the 2012 documentary Sweet Dreams.
A list of books and essays about Francis Ford Coppola:
Gray Frederickson was an American film producer.
Megalopolis is a 2024 American epic science fiction drama film written, directed, and produced by Francis Ford Coppola. Set in an imagined modern America following a devastating disaster, the film features an ensemble cast, including Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Kathryn Hunter, Grace VanderWaal, Chloe Fineman, James Remar, D. B. Sweeney, and Dustin Hoffman.
The following is a list of unproduced Francis Ford Coppola projects in roughly chronological order. During his long career, American film director Francis Ford Coppola has worked on a number of projects which never progressed beyond the pre-production stage under his direction. Some of these productions fell in development hell or were cancelled.