Columbia Pictures

Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., also referred to as Columbia Pictures, is an American film production and distribution studio is the flagship unit of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is one of the major film studios and a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony Group Corporation. Columbia Pictures is one of the leading film studios in the world, and was one of the so-called "Little Three" among the eight major film studios of Hollywood's "Golden Age".

On June 19, 1918, brothers Jack and Harry Cohn and their business partner Joe Brandt founded the studio as Cohn-Brandt-Cohn (CBC) Film Sales Corporation. It adopted the Columbia Pictures name on January 10, 1924 (operating as Columbia Pictures Corporation until December 23, 1968), went public two years later, and eventually began to use the image of Columbia, the female personification of the United States, as its logo. The studio was acquired by the Coca-Cola Company in 1982, then by Sony Corporation of Japan in 1989. Columbia Pictures is presently headquartered at the Irving Thalberg Building on the former Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (currently known as the Sony Pictures Studios) lot in Culver City, California, since 1990.

In its early years, Columbia was a minor player in Hollywood, but began to grow in the late 1920s, spurred by a successful association with director Frank Capra. With Capra and others such as the most successful two reel comedy series, The Three Stooges, Columbia became one of the primary homes of the screwball comedy. In the 1930s, Columbia's major contract stars were Jean Arthur and Cary Grant. In the 1940s, Rita Hayworth became the studio's premier star and propelled their fortunes into the late 1950s. Rosalind Russell, Glenn Ford and William Holden also became major stars at the studio. The company was also primarily responsible for distributing Disney's Silly Symphony film series as well as the Mickey Mouse cartoon series from 1929 to 1932.

Columbia Pictures is currently one of the five live-action labels of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, alongside TriStar Pictures, Screen Gems, Sony Pictures Classics, and 3000 Pictures. Columbia also releases most films produced by Sony Pictures Animation intended for a theatrical release.