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 Bryna Productions logo, designed in November 1956, as it appears in the opening screen credits of Ride Out for Revenge. | |
| Bryna Productions, Incorporated | |
| Company type | Privately held company |
| Industry | |
| Founded | September 28, 1949 in Hollywood, California, United States |
| Founder | |
| Successors |
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| Headquarters | 141 El Camino Drive, Suite 209, , United States |
Key people | |
| Products | Motion pictures |
| Subsidiaries |
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Bryna Productions (later renamed The Bryna Company) is an American independent film and television production company established by actor Kirk Douglas in 1949. The company also produced a handful of films through its subsidiaries, Michael Productions, Joel Productions and Douglas and Lewis Productions, and outside the United States through Brynaprod. Other subsidiaries included Eric Productions, which produced stage plays, Peter Vincent Music, a music publishing company, Bryna International, a photographic service company, and Public Relations Consultants, which supervised the publicity of its early films.[1] Douglas named the main company after his mother, Bryna Demsky (Bryna Danielovitch), while its primary subsidiaries were named after his sons: Michael Douglas, Joel Douglas, Peter Douglas and Eric Douglas.[2][3] In 1970, Bryna Productions was renamed The Bryna Company, when Douglas welcomed his children and second wife into the firm. Nevertheless, Michael, Joel and Peter, wanting to establish individual identities, went on to form their own independent film production companies.[4]
The company had some major film successes, including Paths of Glory, The Vikings, Spartacus, Seven Days in May, Seconds, Grand Prix, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Final Countdown, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Four of the films Bryna Productions made have been deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States National Film Preservation Board and have been selected for preservation in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry: Paths of Glory in 1992, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1993, Seconds in 2015 and Spartacus in 2017.[5] The company was also recognized by the American Cinematheque in 1989, when it held a three-day festival with the screening of eight Bryna Productions films.[6]
Twenty-one of Bryna Productions' films have won and been nominated for awards and prizes at various ceremonies and film festivals, including the Academy Awards, the Golden Globe Awards, the British Academy Film Awards, the Grammy Awards, the Saturn Awards, the Primetime Emmy Awards, the Genie Awards, the Bodil Awards, the Directors Guild of America Award, the Writers Guild of America Awards, the Laurel Awards, the David di Donatello Awards, the Bambi Award, the Belgian Film Critics Association Award, the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, the National Society of Film Critics Awards, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, the Turkish Film Critics Association Awards, the National Board of Review Awards, the People's Choice Awards, the Kinema Junpo Awards, the Sant Jordi Awards, the César Awards, the Nastro d'Argento Award, the Jussi Awards, the Huabiao Awards, the Golden Screen Award, the CableACE Awards, the Golden Reel Awards, the International Film Music Critics Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Award, the Boxoffice Blue Ribbon Award, the American Cinema Editors Award, the Fotogramas de Plata Award, the Hugo Awards; and at the Cannes Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, the San Sebastián International Film Festival, the Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival and the Chicago International Film Festival.
Bryna Productions often co-produced films with other notable independent film production companies, including Burt Lancaster, Harold Hecht and James Hill's Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Films, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh's Curtleigh Productions, Rock Hudson's Gibraltar Productions, James Garner's Cherokee Productions, Stanley Kubrick and James B. Harris' Harris-Kubrick Pictures, Saul Zaentz's Fantasy Films, John Frankenheimner's John Frankenheimer Productions, Richard Quine's Quine Productions, Hal B. Wallis' Wallis-Hazen Productions, Martin Ritt's Martin Ritt Productions, Ray Stark's Seven Arts Productions, Harold Jack Bloom's Thoroughbred Productions, Harold Greenberg's Astral Film Productions, Roland W. Betts' Silver Screen Partners II and Walt Disney's Walt Disney Productions and Touchstone Pictures. It also had financing and distribution deals with major Hollywood studios like United Artists, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Universal-International Pictures, Rank Film Distributors, National General Pictures and Buena Vista, for motion pictures, as well as United Artists Television, NBC, CBS and HBO, for television.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
:04was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Kirk Douglas and Bryna Productions Archived 2015-02-23 at the Wayback Machine at Wisconscin Centre for Film and Television Research
- ^ Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1950). Media History Digital Library. New York, MacFadden Publications, Inc. 1950.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link) - ^ "The San Francisco Examiner from San Francisco, California on September 29, 1985 · 514". Newspapers.com. 29 September 1985. Retrieved 2021-06-24.
- ^ "Complete National Film Registry Listing". Library of Congress. Retrieved 2021-05-23.
- ^ "Sunday News from Kenosha, Wisconsin on October 8, 1989 · 21". Newspapers.com. 8 October 1989. Retrieved 2021-06-15.