American Zoetrope (also known as Omni Zoetrope from 1977 to 1980 and Zoetrope Studios from 1980 until 1990) is a privately run American film production company, centered in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...
,
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
and founded by
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola (; ; born April 7, 1939) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is considered one of the major figures of the New Hollywood filmmaking movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Coppola is the recipient of five ...
and
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American filmmaker. Lucas is best known for creating the '' Star Wars'' and '' Indiana Jones'' franchises and founding Lucasfilm, LucasArts, Industrial Light & Magic and THX. He served as c ...
.
Opened on December 12, 1969, the studio has produced not only the films of Coppola (including ''
Apocalypse Now
''Apocalypse Now'' is a 1979 American epic war film produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The screenplay, co-written by Coppola, John Milius and Michael Herr, is loosely based on the 1899 novella '' Heart of Darkness'' by Joseph ...
'', ''
Bram Stoker's Dracula'' and ''
Tetro''), but also George Lucas's pre-''
Star Wars
''Star Wars'' is an American epic space opera multimedia franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the eponymous 1977 film and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has been expanded into various film ...
'' film (''
THX 1138''), as well as many others by ''avant-garde'' directors such as
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard ( , ; ; 3 December 193013 September 2022) was a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as Fran ...
,
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dyna ...
,
Wim Wenders
Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders (; born 14 August 1945) is a German filmmaker, playwright, author, and photographer. He is a major figure in New German Cinema. Among many honors, he has received three nominations for the Academy Award for Best Docu ...
and
Godfrey Reggio. American Zoetrope was an early adopter of digital filmmaking, including some of the earliest uses of
HDTV
High-definition television (HD or HDTV) describes a television system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since 1936; in more recent times, it refers to the g ...
.
Four films produced by American Zoetrope are included in the
American Film Institute's Top 100 Films. American Zoetrope-produced films have received 15
Academy Awards
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
and 68 nominations.
Formation
Initially located in a warehouse at 827
Folsom Street on the second floor of
The Automatt building, the company's headquarters have, since 1972, been in the historic
Sentinel Building, at 916
Kearny Street
Kearny Street () in San Francisco, California runs north from Market Street to The Embarcadero. Toward its south end, it separates the Financial District from the Union Square and Chinatown districts. Further north, it passes over Telegr ...
in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...
's
North Beach neighborhood.
Coppola named the studio after a
zoetrope
A zoetrope is one of several pre-film animation devices that produce the illusion of motion by displaying a sequence of drawings or photographs showing progressive phases of that motion. It was basically a cylindrical variation of the phénak ...
he was given in the late 1960s by the filmmaker and collector of early film devices, Mogens Skot-Hansen. "Zoetrope" is also the name by which Coppola's quarterly fiction magazine, ''
Zoetrope: All-Story'', is often known.
In 1980, the company bought
General Service Studios in
Hollywood
Hollywood usually refers to:
* Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California
* Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States
Hollywood may also refer to:
Places United States
* Hollywood District (disambiguation)
* Hollywoo ...
,
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
, and became Zoetrope Studios, to produce and distribute films, as did later
DreamWorks studio.
In 1999, it signed a deal with
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by amazon (company), Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded o ...
for a first-look financing and production agreement. In 2000, it signed a 10-year financing pact with VCL Film + Meiden to handle foreign sales of their own titles.
American Zoetrope is now owned entirely by Coppola's son and daughter, directors
Roman Coppola and
Sofia Coppola
Sofia Carmina Coppola (; born May 14, 1971) is an American filmmaker and actress. The youngest child and only daughter of filmmakers Eleanor Coppola, Eleanor and Francis Ford Coppola, she made her film debut as an infant in her father's acclaimed ...
, while a majority of the film library is now owned by
Lionsgate
Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation, doing business as Lionsgate, is a Canadian-American entertainment company. It was formed by Frank Giustra on July 10, 1997, domiciled in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and is currently headquartered ...
(with some exceptions, for example, ''
Bram Stoker's Dracula'', which is currently owned by
Sony Pictures Entertainment
Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Sony Pictures or SPE, and formerly known as Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc.) is an American diversified multinational mass media and entertainment studio Conglomerate (company), conglom ...
) while
StudioCanal
StudioCanal S.A.S. (formerly known as Le Studio Canal+, Canal Plus, Canal+ Distribution, Canal+ D.A., Canal+ Production, and Canal+ Image and also known as StudioCanal International) is a French film production and distribution company that owns ...
owns international distribution rights.
Zoetrope.com, the Coppola family's website, was created around 1996 and became an online community for writers. In 2016, Francis Ford Coppola announced its relaunch as a "virtual studio".
Filmography
Feature films
Television series
Cafe Zoetrope
In the building lobby Coppola operates a small Italian
café
A coffeehouse, coffee shop, or café is an establishment that primarily serves coffee of various types, notably espresso, latte, and cappuccino. Some coffeehouses may serve cold drinks, such as iced coffee and iced tea, as well as other non-c ...
, Cafe Zoetrope, featuring
Inglenook Estate wine and memorabilia from his films.
Earlier, the building had been the location of
Enrico Banducci
Enrico Banducci (born Harry Charles Banducci; February 17, 1922 – October 9, 2007) was an American impresario. Banducci operated the hungry i nightclub in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood, where he launched the careers of The Kingsto ...
's "
hungry i
The hungry i was a nightclub in San Francisco, California, originally located in the North Beach neighborhood. It played a major role in the history of stand-up comedy in the United States. It was launched by Eric "Big Daddy" Nord, who sold i ...
" nightclub.
The neighborhood is well known for its cafes and its writers. Coppola wrote much of the screenplay for ''
The Godfather
''The Godfather'' is a 1972 American crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who co-wrote the screenplay with Mario Puzo, based on Puzo's best-selling 1969 novel of the same title. The film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caa ...
'' in the nearby
Caffe Trieste and
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti (March 24, 1919 – February 22, 2021) was an American poet, painter, social activist, and co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. The author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, an ...
's
City Lights Books is located up Columbus Avenue from the Sentinel Building.
Further reading
* Davies, Tom S.,
Impressive Failures: Mavericks of Film Authorship and the Impossibility of Success in Hollywood (2017).
City University of New York
The City University of New York ( CUNY; , ) is the public university system of New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven senior colleges, seven community colleges and seven pro ...
Academic Works.
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
American companies established in 1969
Film production companies of the United States
Film distributors of the United States
Entertainment companies based in California
Companies based in San Francisco
Cinema of the San Francisco Bay Area
Francis Ford Coppola
George Lucas
North Beach, San Francisco
Mass media companies established in 1969
1969 establishments in California