Paramount Pictures/Historical overview

Founded by in on , Paramount Pictures is America's second oldest, still-operating, motion picture studio behind Universal Studios, though only by a little over a week. Its logo – the highly-recognizable, majestic Paramount mountain – has been part of the company from the beginning, thus making it the oldest surviving Hollywood film logo. For nearly half a century it was one of what once was colloquially known as the "" major Hollywood motion picture studios, along with 20th Century Fox (the "Fox" component having been founded in 1915), and the only surviving one still located in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Hollywood. Ironically, Universal had not been one of them, it being subordinated in a lower tier. One of the original "Big Five" had been (founded on 23 October 1928) which went defunct on 7 March 1958, after which Desilu Studios bought its assets and real estate – but not its backlog library of film titles, even though a clipping from the 1945 RKO film The Spanish Main became a recurrent Star Trek "guest star". Through the acquisition of Desilu itself in 1967, Paramount became the owner of much of what had been a major industry competitor once. 
Paramount Pictures was the company responsible for the film to win the very first "Best Picture" Academy Award in 1929, the silent World War I theatrical feature (1927) – also turning out to become the only silent film to do so – additionally winning the very first "Best Effects, Engineering Effects" Academy Award, the later "Visual Effects" category. Clippings of that movie were featured in the opening title sequences of the two mirror universe episodes.
Since then, Paramount has produced the Academy Award-winning films Going My Way (1944), The Lost Weekend (1945), The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), The Godfather (1972), The Godfather, Part II (1974), Ordinary People (1980), Terms of Endearment (1983), Forrest Gump (1994), Braveheart (1995), and Titanic (1997). Among the other acclaimed films they have produced are Double Indemnity (1944), Stalag 17 (1953), The War of the Worlds (1953, based on the book by H.G. Wells), The Ten Commandments (1956), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Chinatown (1974), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease (1978), Top Gun (1986), Fatal Attraction (1987), Saving Private Ryan (1998), and Zodiac (2007). 
By 2020 one of only five to pass the US$2 billion mark as the all-time highest (worldwide) grossing films, the multi Academy Award winning Titanic (served by such Star Trek alumni as Robert Legato, Don Pennington, James Horner, and Tony Meininger) stands to this very day out as Paramount's biggest success in its entire history by far, having been the very first one in motion picture history to achieve the milestone and holding on to the record for twelve years after which it became surpassed by Fox's Avatar – incidentally and like Titanic, also directed by . At the time Paramount had staked its very existence on the film, which was produced at a hitherto unheard-off production budget of US$200 million, and the contemporary Hollywood press speculated abundantly on the studio's demise, fully expecting the film to fail because of its tired premise. In a sense, Paramount repeated the gamble they had taken back in 1927 when US$2 million (US$28.3 million in 2018 prices) was shelled out for the production of Wings, for those times an unprecedented amount of money to spend on a film production – nor would it be the last time, as they did so again for the 1956 remake of The Ten Commandments and as indeed they would do so yet again in 1978-1979 for (see: The Motion Picture: Costs and revenues). But like with Titanic (and The Ten Commandments for that matter), the gamble paid off as Wings became one of the very first of what was later recognized as "blockbusters". The film ran for sixty-three weeks in cinemas across the nation, which is presently inconceivable, even for the very biggest of the big-budget film productions; Titanic "only" managed to run for forty-one weeks (already considered exceedingly long by that time), having been the biggest blockbuster of its day, and by 2020 still holding out at third place of the all-time highest grossing films. Along with Ben Hur (1959) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2013), Titanic still holds the record of the most Academy Award winning film with eleven wins, including the one Robert Legato earned for "Best Effects, Visual Effects" and the two "Music" ones for James Horner.
Following Titanic in second place at about half the gross as the studio's most successful film is Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), and, together with its 2014 successor Transformers: Age of Extinction, the only other two Paramount films to have surpassed the US$1 billion mark as of 2020. In comparison, The Walt Disney Company, as of 2018 owner of both Lucasfilm Ltd. and Fox, has twenty-three such films they now own listed, including all the others in the US$2 billion plus bracket, whereas sibling and formerly downplayed Universal has seven; Universal and Paramount have actually switched places in the positions they originally held in the early decades, Universal being presently the "bigger" one. 
Since Star Trek was owned by Paramount Television, many of Paramount Pictures' classic films have been featured on, or referenced to, in the various later Star Trek shows, including I'm No Angel (1933), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), Sunset Boulevard (1950), Shane (1953), To Catch a Thief (1955), and Rosemary's Baby (1968). The former two are now under ownership of Universal Studios as they own most pre-1950 Paramount sound features.
Upon the acquirement of Desilu, Paramount Pictures turned two other former Desilu properties into franchises by releasing in 1987 an acclaimed feature film adaptation of The Untouchables, which was originally an older Desilu television series (also referenced on Star Trek in and ).
But it was Mission: Impossible that truly fulfilled the hopes Paramount had for it when it acquired Desilu back in 1967. Already doing well in its original seven-season run (totaling 171 episodes), a two-season (totaling 35 episodes) was produced in 1988, though it suffered the exact same fate the Original Series third season did through inept planning by network ABC. However, aware that Mission Impossible (like Star Trek) had for the longest of times been a sub-culture favorite, convinced Paramount to initiate the development of the first of what was to become the highly successful Mission: Impossible film franchise, starring himself, as well as staking out a considerable claim in them as producer and production company. The first film being successfully released in 1996, to be followed with four others by 2015, Mission: Impossible finally fulfilled its hoped-for potential by becoming a huge and profitable on its own, comparable to that of Star Trek (huge, but still smaller), having been preceded by two television series. As a franchise, Mission: Impossibles history has shared some remarkable similarities with that of Star Trek, including the split ownership issue resulting from the 2005/2006 breakup of old Viacom – see: main article. 
Other television series they subsequently produced included The Odd Couple, Happy Days, Taxi, Cheers, MacGyver, Wings, Frasier, 7th Heaven, and The 4400. They also continued to produce the news magazine Entertainment Tonight.
In addition to Mission: Impossible and Star Trek, Paramount Pictures also holds the rights to such successful franchises as Beverly Hills Cop, Friday the 13th, Indiana Jones, and the films featuring 's Jack Ryan character (The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, etc.). In 2001, Paramount Pictures relaunched itself with a new CGI logo nicknamed the "CGI Majestic Mountain."
<tabber>
|-| Losing TV division=In , following the CBS/Viacom split, Paramount Pictures purchased the Steven Spielberg's production company (co-founded in 1994 with former Paramount executive Jeffrey Katzenberg). Yet, the split also meant that Paramount from now on was no longer a television production company for the first time in its history, in the process losing any and all title to the Star Trek television property, though retaining the right to produce Star Trek features through a license acquired from CBS.
On 8 July 2007, Paramount Pictures set the record for fastest studio to earn US$1 billion at the US box office in a single year, reaching the mark after 189 days. This is the first time they have held this record since 1998. This achievement is due primarily to the success of the Paramount Pictures/DreamWorks release of Transformers, written by Star Trek (2009) scribes Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, and has been part of the reasons why the studio has decided to give the by then near defunct Star Trek franchise another go.
The studio's 2008 slate of film releases began with the release of the J.J. Abrams-produced Cloverfield on 18 January 2008. This film, which only cost US$25 million to make, earned US$40 million at the box office in its opening weekend – the best January opening on record. It was the studio's 10th biggest opening after Shrek the Third, Transformers, War of the Worlds, Mission: Impossible II, Mission: Impossible III, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, The Longest Yard, Mission: Impossible, and Deep Impact. Cloverfield broke the Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend record, as well, with a four-day total of US$46 million. Cloverfield is also notable as the film to which the first official teaser trailer for 2009's Star Trek was attached.
Paramount's other films which opened in 2008 included The Spiderwick Chronicles, Stop-Loss, the highly-anticipated, but lukewarmly-received Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the Marvel Comics-based Iron Man, the animated Kung Fu Panda and Madagascar: The Crate Escape, The Love Guru, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Iron Man earned $98.6 million on its opening weekend, marking the studio's best opening for a live-action release. In 2009, in addition to Star Trek, Paramount released films such as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (also co-written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman), Nowhereland (starring Eddie Murphy, Vanessa Williams, and Ronny Cox), and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (starring Rachel Nichols).
</tabber>