21st Century Film Corporation

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The 21st Century Film Corporation Inc.
Fate	Bankruptcy
Founded	1971 est.
Defunct	1996
Location	7000 West Third Street, Los Angeles, CA 90048, U.S.A.
Industry	Motion Picture Production & Releasing
Products	Motion Pictures
Key people	Menahem Golan (CEO), Ami Artzi & Giancarlo Parretti
Parent	Received limited funding from The Cannon Group Inc.

21st Century Film Corporation was a small scale theatrical distribution company formed sometime in the early seventies as a production company and distributor. The company had largely gone unnoticed for nearly twenty years when sometime in the late '80s while filing for bankruptcy it was purchased by Giancarlo Parretti (who had also recently purchased Cannon Films) and was eventually handed over to Israeli filmmaker Menahem Golan as part of Golan's severance package when he decided to leave his last company Cannon after disagreements with the new Cannon CEO Parretti.

[edit] Small success

Golan's goal was to release high quality motion pictures to the American and worldwide film audience, but 21st Century only enjoyed small-scale success releasing low-budget, art-house films like Eraserhead and Leaving Las Vegas, as well as remakes of Phantom of the Opera and Night of the Living Dead.

[edit] Rights to Marvel Comics characters

In 1990, 21st Century bought the film rights to two Marvel Comics heroes, Captain America and Spider-Man. Captain America was filmed and was given only a limited theatrical release worldwide, despite its major budget. In later years, 21st Century eventually lost the rights to filming Spider-Man, and released a few more movies including Deadly Heroes and most notably Death Wish V: The Face of Death which was not only the last in the series but Charles Bronson's final theatrical film.

[edit] Closure

The studio ecountered serious financial troubles and eventually went bankrupt in 1996; Golan later returned to his native Israel and formed New Cannon, Inc.