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Cannon Films

From The Grindhouse Cinema Database

OFFICIAL SITELOGOS


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Cannon Films was incorporated in 1967 by Dennis Friedland and Chris Dewey. Their first films were English language versions of Swedish porn films. Their first mainstream hit was 1970's Joe, starring Peter Boyle. They limited their films to budgets of $300,000 or less. By the end of the decade, the company was in financial trouble, leading to Friedland and Dewey selling the company to Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus for $500,000. Their approach involved buying bottom-barrel scripts and making them into hits. They acquired the rights to Death Wish and produced a series of commercially, but not critically, successful sequels. They also produced the Chuck Norris Missing in Action films, Breakin', several Ninja films, and found their biggest success with Sylvester Stallone's Cobra. They also experimented with such highbrow fare as Powaqqatsi. Their 1986 Dutch production The Assault won the 1987 Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. Bad decisions, slashed budgets and several flops in the late 1980s to early 1990s led to the company's demise.

Along with buying other studios' libraries and investing in movie theater chains, they also extended into television, co-producing Season 2 of the puppet comedy series D.C. Follies.

Pages in category "Cannon Films"

The following 86 pages are in this category, out of 86 total.

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