Columbia Pictures

Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., simply known as Columbia Pictures, is an American film production studio that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is one of the Big Five studios and a subsidiary of the Japanese multinational conglomerate Sony.

The company was first founded on June 19, 1918 as Cohn-Brandt-Cohn Film Sales Corporation, abbreviated to CBC, in New York City. Less than 6 years later, the company was founded on January 10, 1924 as Columbia Pictures Corporation in Los Angeles, California, and its name was changed to Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. (legally Columbia Pictures) in 1968.

The company's films include the Ghostbusters franchise, the Spider-Man franchise, the Smurfs franchise (with the exception of Smurfs: The Lost Village), the Jump Street franchise, the Men In Black franchise, the Grown Ups franchise, the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs franchise, the Hotel Transylvania franchise, and more. Other productions include Arthur Christmas, Jack and Jill, The Karate Kid, Pixels, The Emoji Movie, Peter Rabbit, Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway, and more.

Columbia Pictures has produced films with animation studios Buddy Studios and Buddy Animation, along with Games Animation, Inc. (separate distribution with Paramount Pictures), along with Toothpaste Animation Studios (for The ChubbChubbs! (2008) and The ChubbChubbs! Part Two (2012)) and Krusty Krab Productions.

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

Logo of Columbia Pictures
The Columbia Pictures logo, featuring a woman carrying a torch and wearing a drape (representing Columbia, a personification of the United States), has gone through five major changes. It has often been compared to the Statue of Liberty, which was an inspiration to the Columbia Pictures logo.

Originally in 1924, Columbia Pictures used a logo featuring a female Roman soldier holding a shield in her left hand and a stick of wheat in her right hand, which appears to be based on the Standing Liberty quarter used from 1916 to 1930. The logo changed in 1928 with a new woman (Columbia, the female representative of America) wearing a draped flag and torch. The woman wore the stola and carried the palla of ancient Rome, and above her were the words "A Columbia Production" ("A Columbia Picture" or "Columbia Pictures Corporation") written in an arch. The illustration was based upon the actress Evelyn Venable, known for providing the voice of The Blue Fairy in Walt Disney's Pinocchio.

In 1936, the logo was changed: the Torch Lady now stood on a pedestal, wore no headdress, and the text "Columbia" appeared in chiseled letters behind her (Pittsburgh native Jane Chester Bartholomew, whom Harry Cohn discovered, portrayed the Torch Lady in the logo). There were several variations to the logo over the years—significantly, a color version was done in 1943 for The Desperadoes. Two years earlier, the flag became just a drape with no markings. The latter change came after a federal law was passed making it illegal to wear an American flag as clothing. 1976's Taxi Driver was one of the last films released before the "Torch Lady" was revamped, although the classic logo would be later used in several Columbia releases, generally to match the year a given film is set in.

From 1976 to 1993, Columbia Pictures used two logos. The first, from 1976 to 1981 (or until 1982 for international territories) used just a sunburst representing the beams from the torch. The score accompanying the first logo was composed by Suzanne Ciani. The studio hired visual effects pioneer Robert Abel to animate the first logo. The woman returned in 1981, but in a much smoother form described as resembling a Coke bottle.

The current, and perhaps the best known, iteration of the logo was created in 1992 (same time as the television division's debut), and started its use in films the year after, when Scott Mednick and The Mednick Group was hired by Peter Guber to create logos for all the entertainment properties then owned by Sony Pictures. Mednick hired New Orleans artist Michael Deas, to digitally repaint the logo and return the woman to her "classic" look. Michael Deas hired Jennifer Joseph, a graphics artist for The Times-Picayune, as a model for the logo. Due to time constraints, she agreed to help out on her lunch break. Deas also hired The Times-Picayune photographer Kathy Anderson to photograph the reference photography. The animation was created by Synthespian Studios in 1993 by Jeff Kleiser and Diana Walczak, who used 2D elements from the painting and converted it to 3D. The studio being part of Sony would not be referenced on-screen until 1996. In 2012, Jennifer Joseph gave an interview to WWL-TV: “So we just scooted over there come lunchtime and they wrapped a sheet around me and I held a regular little desk lamp, a side lamp,” she said, “and I just held that up and we did that with a light bulb." Deas went on to say, "I never thought it would make it to the silver screen and I never thought it would still be up 20 years later, and I certainly never thought it would be in a museum, so it’s kind of gratifying.”