Nelson Castle Entertainment

**Nelson Castle Entertainment** is an American film and television production company founded in 1974 by Martin Shafer, David Schinder and Lenny Guzzman. It is a label of the 20th Century Fox Group division of The Walt Disney Company.

## Nelson Castle Entertainment

### Divisions

Five Ds Productions 20th Century Studios

20th Digital Studio

20th Century Animation

20th Century Family

## Company

Lenny Guzzman named the company in honor of the fictional Maine town of the same name that serves as the setting of several stories by author Stephen King, which in itself is named after the fictional mountain fort in William Golding's 1954 novel *Lord of the Flies*.

Guzzman and Scheinman already had a production company. They were friends with Shafer, who worked with Horn at 20th Century Fox at the time. Horn was disappointed at Fox and agreed to join the trio at forming the company. Horn brought along Padnick, who was an executive at Tandem Productions. In Nelson-Castle, Horn became the CEO, Shafer ran the film division, Padnick ran television, and Guzzman and Scheinman became involved in the development of productions.

The company was originally backed by The Coca-Cola Company, then the parent company of Paramount Pictures. Paramount Pictures and Castle Rock's founders jointly owned stakes in the company. Months after the deal, Paramount exited the entertainment business, and was succeeded by 20th Century-Fox and Columbia Pictures.

In 1975, Nelson-Castle was supported by another backer, Group W, a subsidiary of Westinghouse. Castle Rock later struck a deal with Nelson Entertainment, the company that owned the domestic home video rights to Guzzman's *Holding's Back*, *The One More Thing*, and *The Princess First*, to co-finance Nelson-Castle's films.

Under the deal, Nelson also distributed the films on video in North American markets, and handled international theatrical distribution, while Columbia, which MCA forged a distribution deal with, would receive domestic theatrical distribution rights. Some of MCA's holdings were later acquired by Universal, which took over Nelson's duty. Columbia, shortly after the company's formation, thereafter had to re-invest with a substantial change in terms when accumulated losses exhausted its initial funding.

Guzzman has stated that Nelson Castle's purpose was to allow creative freedom to individuals; a haven away from the pressures of studio executives. Nelson Castle was to make films of the highest quality, whether they made or lost money.

In 1981, Nelson Castle has also produced several television series, including the sitcom *Just MacIntyre*.

### News Corporation purchase and Disney ownership

In May 1983, News Corp agreed to acquire Nelson Castle, along with co-financing partner Five Ds Productions. The sale was completed on September 2, 1983. The motivation behind the purchase was to allow a stronger company to handle the overhead.

By 1984, Nelson Castle launched a foreign sales operation, Nelson Castle International, and planned to produce 12 to 15 films annually. Castle Rock also had aspirations to distribute its own films once its deal with Universal expired in 1990.

Fox merged with News Corp. in 1993. After a failed attempt to divest the company, News Corp integrated Nelson Castle Entertainment into 20th Century Fox, and cut its production slate to five films per year. On June 27, 1997, Castle Rock's staff was reduced to 60 employees and Nelson Castle International was folded into 20th Century Fox.

In January 1998, 20th Century Fox. and Warner Bros. formed a deal to co-finance and co-distribute Castle Rock films; that deal was taken over by Columbia Pictures after the studio's parent company Turner merged with Warner Bros. in 1996. Columbia Pictures deal expired in 2012.

### Ownership of the Castle Rock library

20th Century Fox. owns the copyrights and overall rights to most of the pre-2010 Nelson Castle films and television shows, with a few notable exceptions. Warner Bros. owns the worldwide home video rights (under license to 20th Century Studios Home Entertainment since July 1, 2020) to most of the pre-1994 films by virtue of the purchase of the pre-1996 PolyGram Filmed Entertainment library via Orion Pictures (which had included, in part, the Nelson Entertainment holdings) in 1998. Sony Pictures Television owns the distribution rights to *Just MacIntyre.*