Columbia Pictures

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Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. (CPII) is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies in the world, a member of the so-called Big Six. It was one of the so-called Little Three among the eight major film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age.

Today, Columbia Pictures has no connection with CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System), but it is a sister company to the former CBS record division. In fact, from May 2004-December 2005, it was the only one of the Big Six without an affiliated broadcast television network, and (along with Paramount Pictures) is one of 2 to have its name erased from television (but unlike Paramount, Columbia is still a direct sister company to its former television division; however the parent companies of both Paramount and its former TV division are themselves sisters).

The studio, founded in 1919 as Cohn-Brandt-Cohn Film Sales by brothers Jack and Harry Cohn and Joe Brandt, released its first feature film in August 1922. It adopted the Columbia Pictures name in 1924 and went public two years later. In its early years a minor player in Hollywood, Columbia began to grow in the late 1920s, spurred by a successful association with director Frank Capra.

In 1982, the studio was purchased by Coca-Cola; that same year it launched Tri-Star Pictures as a joint venture with HBO and CBS. Five years later, Coca-Cola divested Columbia, which merged with Tri-Star. After a brief period of independence, the combined studio was acquired by Sony in 1989.