 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Filmmaking, distribution |
| Founded | 1978 |
| Founder | George Harrison Denis O'Brien |
| Defunct | 2013 |
| Fate | Liquidation |
| Successor | GFM Films GFM Animation |
| Headquarters | London, England, UK |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | David Francis |
| Website | handmadefilms |
HandMade Films was an English film production and distribution company. Notable films from the studio include Monty Python's Life of Brian , Time Bandits , The Long Good Friday and Withnail and I . [1]
HandMade Films was formed by former Beatle George Harrison and business partner Denis O'Brien in 1978 to finance the controversial Monty Python film Life of Brian . [1] Harrison had been introduced to O'Brien by actor Peter Sellers in 1973. Soon afterward the two went into business together. [2] The HandMade logo was drawn by Python's animator Terry Gilliam. [3]
When the original financiers of Brian, EMI Films, pulled out of the project less than a week before filming was to commence, the creators had to find other financing. [4] [5] Harrison, a friend and fan of the Pythons, mortgaged his home in order to finance the feature. [1] Eric Idle of the Pythons later called it "the most anybody's ever paid for a cinema ticket in history". [6] Life of Brian grossed $21 million at the box office in the US. [2]
Harrison explained: "The name of the company came about as a bit of a joke. I'd been to Wookey Hole in Somerset ... [near] an old paper mill where they show you how to make old underpants into paper. So I bought a few rolls, and they had this watermark 'British Handmade Paper' ... So we said ... we'll call it Handmade Films." [2]
The first film distributed by HandMade Films was The Long Good Friday (1980), and the first it produced was Time Bandits (1981), a co-scripted project by Monty Python 's Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin. [7] The film featured a new song by Harrison, "Dream Away", in the closing credits. [8] Time Bandits became one of HandMade's most successful and acclaimed efforts; with a budget of $5 million, it earned $35 million in the US within ten weeks of its release. [8]
Harrison served as executive producer for 23 films with HandMade, including the Oscar-nominated Mona Lisa , Shanghai Surprise and Withnail and I . He made several cameo appearances in these films, including a role as a nightclub singer in Shanghai Surprise, [9] for which he recorded five new songs. [10] According to Ian Inglis, Harrison's "executive role in HandMade Films helped to sustain British cinema at a time of crisis, producing some of the country's most memorable movies of the 1980s." [11] In 1987, HandMade Films made an agreement with independent motion picture distributor Island Pictures to distribute four films for limited theatrical release from 1987 to mid-1988: The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne , Track 29 , The Raggedy Rawney and Bellman and True . [12]
Following a series of box office bombs in the late 1980s and excessive debt incurred by O'Brien, which was guaranteed by Harrison, HandMade's financial situation became precarious. [13] [14] The company ceased operations in 1991 [1] and was sold three years later to Paragon Entertainment Corporation of Toronto, Canada. [15] Afterward, Harrison sued O'Brien for $25 million for fraud and negligence, resulting in an $11.6 million judgment in 1996. [16] [1]
New owner Paragon Entertainment Corporation restarted production under the HandMade name in 1996–1997. [17] The company's most notable release of that era was Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998). In 1999, Patrick Meehan and Cartier Investments acquired HandMade from Paragon. [18] [19]
In June 1999, The Equator Group plc became the exclusive distributor and manager of the HandMade Films library, [20] and attempted to purchase the company from Cartier outright, but negotiations were unsuccessful until a reverse takeover agreement with Hand Made Holdings Ltd [21] announced on 15 May 2006. [22]
The Equator Group reincorporated as HandMade Plc on 8 June 2006 [23] and the new company was traded on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) stock exchange (changing its ticker symbol from EQG to HMF). Trading of HandMade plc shares was suspended several times, notably June to October 2009, after the company failed to provide 2008 audit results to shareholders. [24] [25]
On 29 April 2010, Almorah Services Ltd tendered a takeover bid, priced at £0.01 per share in cash [26] and HMF was delisted from the AIM on 29 June 2010. [27] HandMade plc was re-registered as HandMade Limited, a private company, on 2 February 2011. [28] Handmade Limited entered administration on 11 July 2012, liquidation on 24 April 2013, [29] and was dissolved on 22 February 2018. [30]
In 2016, Park Circus purchased distribution rights to the HandMade film library. [31]
In 2017, following an investigation by the Insolvency Service, three HandMade Limited directors were disqualified from acting as a director of a company: Patrick Anthony Meehan for 13 years, David Bernard Ravden for five-and-a-half years, and Peter William Parkinson for four years. The directors misused funds to "pay off relatives" and "on matters undisclosed to advisers, shareholder or potential investors". [29]
Withnail and I is a 1987 British black comedy film written and directed by Bruce Robinson. Loosely based on Robinson's life in London in the late 1960s, the plot follows two unemployed actors, Withnail and "I" who share a flat in Camden Town in 1969. Needing a holiday, they obtain the key to a country cottage in the Lake District belonging to Withnail's eccentric uncle Monty and drive there. The weekend holiday proves less recuperative than they expected.
Groove is a 2000 American film directed by Greg Harrison. It portrays one night in the San Francisco underground rave scene. Through a single email, the word spreads that a huge rave is going to take place in an abandoned warehouse. John Digweed has a cameo as himself and also contributed to the soundtrack with Nick Muir, under their production alias Bedrock.
The Red Curtain Trilogy is a DVD boxed set, released in 2002, of the first three films directed by Baz Luhrmann:
Bad Hat Harry Productions, Inc. is an American film and television production company founded in 1994 by director Bryan Singer. It has produced such films as The Usual Suspects and the X-Men film series, as well as the television series House. The name is an homage to Steven Spielberg and comes from a line uttered by Roy Scheider in the 1975 feature Jaws: an elderly swimmer in a bathing cap teases police chief Martin Brody about not going in the water; Brody replies, "That's some bad hat, Harry." The original 2004 logo paid animated homage to this scene. The current logo, introduced in 2011, is taken from the police lineup scene of the companies' first film,The Usual Suspects.
Laika, LLC is an American production company specializing in stop-motion animation and forthcoming live-action feature films, commercial content for all media, music videos, and short films. The studio is best known for its stop-motion feature films Corpse Bride, Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings, and Missing Link. It is owned by Nike co-founder Phil Knight and is located in Hillsboro, Oregon, part of the Portland metropolitan area. Knight's son, Travis Knight, acts as Laika's president and CEO.
Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer are American and Canadian filmmakers. They have primarily worked on parody films, which they began writing and directing during the mid-2000s. Friedberg and Seltzer's first five films between 2006 and 2010 received wide theatrical releases to mostly commercial success, but universally negative reviews; their films Epic Movie (2007), Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie are considered among the worst ever made. Following Vampires Suck (2010), their subsequent releases in the 2010s garnered less attention, largely due to their limited theatrical distribution.
Mike Mitchell is an American film director, writer, producer, actor and animator. He has directed the films Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (1999), Surviving Christmas (2004), Sky High (2005), Shrek Forever After (2010), Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (2011), The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (2015), Trolls (2016), The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019) and Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024).
Denis O'Brien was an American attorney, best-known as the business manager of George Harrison of the Beatles and co-founder of the film studio HandMade Films.
The Stone Quarry Inc. is an American production company established in 2004 by filmmaker Zack Snyder, his wife Deborah Snyder and their producing partner Wesley Coller.
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Undefeated is a 2011 American documentary film directed by Daniel Lindsay and T. J. Martin. The film documents the struggles of a high school football team, the Manassas Tigers of Memphis, as they attempt a winning season after years of losses. The team is turned around by coach Bill Courtney, who helps form a group of young men into an academic and athletic team.
Absolutely Anything is a 2015 British science fantasy comedy film directed by Terry Jones, and written by Terry Jones and Gavin Scott. It stars Simon Pegg, Kate Beckinsale, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Rob Riggle, Eddie Izzard and Joanna Lumley, with the nonhuman characters' voices provided by John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Jones, Michael Palin and Robin Williams. It was the first movie to feature all living Monty Python members since Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983), and the first without Graham Chapman, who died in 1989. Principal photography and production began on 24 March 2014 and ended on 12 May that year. The film was released in the United Kingdom on 14 August 2015 by Lionsgate UK, and in the United States on 12 May 2017, grossing $6.3 million worldwide.
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