Paramount Pictures

**Paramount Pictures Corporation** (commonly known as **Paramount Pictures**, or simply **Paramount**; common metonym: Par) is an American film and television production and distribution company and a subsidiary of ViacomCBS. It is the fifth oldest film studio in the world, the second oldest film studio in the United States (behind Universal Pictures), and the sole member of the "Big Five" film studios still located in the city limits of Los Angeles.

In 1916, film producer Adolph Zukor put 22 actors and actresses under contract and honored each with a star on the logo. In 2014, Paramount Pictures became the first major Hollywood studio to distribute all of its films in digital form only. The company's headquarters and studios are located at 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, California, United States.

Paramount Pictures is a member of the Motion Picture Association (MPA).

## Film library

Main article: Lists of Paramount Pictures films

A few years after the ruling of the *United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.* case in 1948, Music Corporation of America (MCA) approached Paramount offering $50 million for 750 sound feature films released prior to December 1, 1949 with payment to be spread over a period of several years. Paramount saw this as a bargain since the fleeting movie studio saw very little value in its library of old films at the time. To address any antitrust concerns, MCA set up EMKA, Ltd. as a dummy corporation to sell these films to television. EMKA's/Universal Television's library includes the five Paramount Marx Brothers films, most of the Bob Hope–Bing Crosby *Road to...* pictures, and other classics such as *Trouble in Paradise*, *Shanghai Express*, *She Done Him Wrong*, *Sullivan's Travels*, *The Palm Beach Story*, *For Whom the Bell Tolls*, *Double Indemnity*, *The Lost Weekend*, and *The Heiress*.

The studio has produced many critically acclaimed films such as *Titanic*, *Footloose*, *Breakfast at Tiffany's*, *Braveheart*, *Ghost*, *The Truman Show*, *Mean Girls*, *Psycho*, *Rocketman*, *Ferris Bueller's Day Off*, *The Curious Case of Benjamin Button*, *Days of Thunder*, *Rosemary's Baby*, *Nebraska*, *Sunset Boulevard*, *Forrest Gump*, *Super 8*, *Coming to America*, *World War Z*, *Babel*, *The Conversation*, *The Fighter*, *Interstellar*, *Team America*, *Terms of Endearment*, *The Wolf of Wall Street* and *A Quiet Place*; as well as commercially successful franchises and/or properties such as: the *Godfather* films, *Star Trek*, *Mission: Impossible*, *SpongeBob SquarePants*, the *Grease* films, *Sonic the Hedgehog*, the *Top Gun* films, *The Italian Job*, the *Transformers* films, the *Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles* films, the *Tomb Raider* films, the *Friday the 13th* films, the *Cloverfield* films, the *G.I. Joe* films, the *Beverly Hills Cop* films, the *Terminator* films, the *Pet Sematary* films, the *Without a Paddle* films, *Jackass*, the *Odd Couple* films, *South Park*, the *Crocodile Dundee* films, the *Charlotte's Web* films, the *Wayne's World* films, *Beavis and Butt-Head*, *Jimmy Neutron*, the *War of the Worlds* films, the *Naked Gun* films, the *Anchorman* films, *Dora the Explorer*, the *Addams Family* films, *Rugrats*, the *Zoolander* films, *Æon Flux*, the *Ring* films, the *Bad News Bears* films, *The Wild Thornberrys*, and the *Paranormal Activity* films; as well as the first four films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the *Indiana Jones* films, and various DreamWorks Animation properties (such as *Shrek*, the *Madagascar* sequels, the first two *Kung Fu Panda* films, and the first *How to Train Your Dragon*) before both studios were respectively acquired by Disney (via Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm) and Universal Studios.