Warner Bros. Studios is one of the most famous film and television companies in the world. You may not realize it, but if you’ve watched TV or movies most of your life, you’ll have grown up with many of the movies this production company has brought us. They brought us some of the earliest cartoon characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Sylvester and Tweety. These characters were the beginning of the world of animated cinema that we love and know today.
The name goes back to Warner’s four founding brothers, Harry, Jack, Sam and Albert. The three older brothers started out in the movie theater business with a movie projector. They showed movies in the mining towns of Pennsylvania and Ohio. The first theater they opened was called the Cascade in 1903 based in Pennsylvania.
The first movies were made in the 1910s and 1920s. They have made hundreds of movies and in some ways helped shape the film industry we see today. The original studio was built on a parcel of farmland in 1926. They soon built Brownstone Street, which was renamed Ashley Boulevard in 2002, and New York Street, now two of the oldest and most used exterior sets. This allowed them to produce many more films. By the time the 1930s rolled around, they were making a lot more movies, and business was booming. They built nine new soundstages that are still in use today.
The 1940s brought us Casablanca and the Yankee Doodle Dandy. They also added three more soundstages and an outside residential set which is again still in use today. The street was used in East of Eden with James Dean and John Wayne in The Shootist.
His success continued into the 1950s and 1960s with hits like Rebel Without a Cause, My Fair Lady, and Bonnie and Clyde. In the 1970s, some of his most popular productions included Superman, Every Which Way but Loose Boulevard Nights, and Monty Python’s Life of Brian. The ’80s brought us more Superman movies and the Lethal Weapon and Police Academy movies.
In 2001, Warner Bros and its parent company, Time Warner Inc., merged with America Online Inc. This made them the world’s leading media and communications companies.
They recently had a huge success with the Harry Potter Movie Franchise, which broke many box office records and launched a cultural phenomenon. Just last year, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 became the biggest premiere of all time, breaking box office records. Slumdog Millionaire has won eight Academy Awards, seven BAFTA Awards, and four Golden Globes. The list of movies and awards each movie has is endless.
The future of Warner Bros. Studio looks rosy, it seems that whatever they put in their hands they achieve. There will be more box office records broken and awards won. May they prosper for a long time.
