American Zoetrope (also known as Omni Zoetrope from 1977 to 1980 and Zoetrope Studios from 1980 until 1991) is a privately run American film production company, centered in San Francisco, California, and founded by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas.
Opened on December 12, 1969,Fog City Mavericks. Starz, Englewood, CO, USA. June 15, 2011. Television. the studio has produced not only the films of Coppola (including Apocalypse Now, Bram Stoker's Dracula and Tetro), but also George Lucas' pre-Star Wars films THX 1138 and American Graffiti, as well as many others by avant-garde directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Akira Kurosawa, Wim Wenders and Godfrey Reggio. American Zoetrope was an early adopter of digital filmmaking, including some of the earliest uses of HDTV.
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 and 68 nominations.
History 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 in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood.
Coppola named the studio after a zoetrope 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.
The company was initially based at Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, where he had run until a dispute had emerged in 1970, a year before THX 1138 was released.
In 1972, Coppola partnered with Peter Bogdanovich and William Friedkin to set up The Directors Company at Paramount Pictures, which was affiliated with Zoetrope, and The Conversation was one of the films that came out of the deal. When the effort failed, the company bought out an interest in New York-based film distributor Cinema 5. He later started a new company Coppola-Cinema 7 in 1975, after talks with Cinema 7 failed and set up with a major distributor.
In 1980, the company bought General Service Studios in Hollywood, California, and became Zoetrope Studios, to produce and distribute films, as did later DreamWorks studio.
Zoetrope as a whole faced bankruptcy between 1983 and 1992 after losing money on One from the Heart, and shut down its production studio in Hollywood and returned to being a production company in San Francisco, initially retaining the Zoetrope Studios name, the studio readopting the American Zoetrope name in 1991 with a first-look deal at Columbia Pictures, and Bram Stoker's Dracula became the first film to come out of the pact. Coppola had sold the studio in 1984 to The Singer Family and rechristened as Hollywood Center Studios.
The studio also provided funding for Commercial Pictures, a studio formed by Roman Coppola and Sofia Coppola in 1988, who had produced low-budget feature films, most notably Clownhouse and The Spirit of '76. In the mid-1990s, the company entered into TV movies and miniseries, signing a contract with RHI Entertainment to produce material. In 1997, the company signed a deal with PolyGram Television to finance television projects.
In 1999, it signed a deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) for a first-look financing and production agreement. In 2000, it signed a ten-year financing pact with VCL Film + Medien to handle foreign sales of their own titles.
By 2007, ownership of American Zoetrope had been passed to Coppola's son and daughter, directors Roman Coppola and Sofia Coppola.Coppola stated this in an interview with Harry Knowles for Ain't It Cool News published on May 8, 2007.
In 2010, Lionsgate announced a deal to distribute American Zoetrope films, including classics like The Conversation and Apocalypse Now, in North America on DVD, Blu-ray, electronic-sell-through, VOD as well as broadcast distribution rights. The only movies from the Coppola canon that will not be released as part of the pact are The Godfather trilogy, which is owned by Paramount.
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".
In 2024, American Zoetrope earned its first Tony Award for Best Musical as one of the producers of the 2023 stage musical adaptation of The Outsiders.
Filmography
Feature films {| class="wikitable sortable" |- ! scope="col" | Year ! scope="col" | Title ! scope="col" | Director ! scope="col" style="width:110px;" | Company ! scope="col" | Credit ! scope="col" | References |- |||The Rain People||Francis Ford Coppola|| rowspan="8" |American Zoetrope|| rowspan="3" |Production company||American Zoetrope [us] |- |||THX 1138||George Lucas|| |- | rowspan="2" |||The Godfather||Francis Ford Coppola|| |- |Ludwig: Requiem for a Virgin King||Hans-Jürgen Syberberg||Distributor|| |- |||American Graffiti||George Lucas|| rowspan="2" |Production company|| |- | rowspan="2" |||The Conversation||Francis Ford Coppola|| |- |The Godfather Part II||Francis Ford Coppola||Production facilities furnished through (as American Zoetrope San Francisco)|| |- | rowspan="2" |||Perfumed Nightmare||Kidlat Tahimik||Distributor|| |- |Hitler: A Film from Germany||Hans-Jürgen Syberberg|| rowspan="3" |Omni Zoetrope||Distributor|| |- | rowspan="2" |||Apocalypse Now||Francis Ford Coppola|| rowspan="2" |Production company||Zoetrope Studios [us] |- |The Black Stallion||Carroll Ballard|| |- | rowspan="2" |||Sauve qui peut (la vie)||Jean-Luc Godard|| rowspan="23" |Zoetrope Studios||Production company/distributor|| |- |Kagemusha||Akira Kurosawa||Production company|| |- | rowspan="8" |||Parsifal||Hans-Jürgen Syberberg||Distributor|| |- |The Escape Artist||Caleb Deschanel||Production company|| |- |Passion||Jean-Luc Godard||Production company/distributor|| |- |The Grey Fox||Phillip Borsos|| rowspan="4" |Production company|| |- |Koyaanisqatsi||Godfrey Reggio|| |- |The Making of 'One from the Heart'''||Tony St. John|| |- |Hammett||Wim Wenders|| |- |One from the Heart||Francis Ford Coppola||Production company/distributor|| |- | rowspan="3" |||The Outsiders||Francis Ford Coppola|| rowspan="23" |Production company|| |- |Rumble Fish||Francis Ford Coppola|| |- |The Black Stallion Returns||Robert Dalva|| |- |||The Cotton Club||Francis Ford Coppola|| |- | rowspan="2" |||Seven Minutes in Heaven||Linda Feferman|| |- |Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters||Paul Schrader|| |- |||Peggy Sue Got Married||Francis Ford Coppola|| |- | rowspan="3" |||Tough Guys Don't Dance||Norman Mailer|| |- |Gardens of Stone||Francis Ford Coppola|| |- |Barfly||Barbet Schroeder|| |- |||Tucker: The Man and His Dream||Francis Ford Coppola|| |- |||Wait Until Spring, Bandini||Dominique Deruddere|| |- |||The Godfather Part III||Francis Ford Coppola|| |- |||Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse||Fax Bahr, Eleanor Coppola, and George Hickenlooper|| rowspan="46" |American Zoetrope|| |- | rowspan="2" |||Bram Stoker's Dracula||Francis Ford Coppola|| |- |Wind||Carroll Ballard|| |- |||The Secret Garden||Agnieszka Holland|| |- | rowspan="2" |||Mary Shelley's Frankenstein||Kenneth Branagh|| |- |Don Juan DeMarco||Jeremy Leven|| |- | rowspan="2" |||Haunted||Lewis Gilbert|| |- |My Family||Gregory Nava|| |- |||Jack||Francis Ford Coppola|| |- | rowspan="2" |||The Rainmaker||Francis Ford Coppola|| |- |Buddy||Caroline Thompson||Production company (as An American Zoetrope Production)|| |- | rowspan="4" |||The Florentine||Nick Stagliano | rowspan="12" |Production company|| |- |The Virgin Suicides||Sofia Coppola|| |- |The Third Miracle||Agnieszka Holland|| |- |Sleepy Hollow||Tim Burton|| |- | rowspan="4" |||Jeepers Creepers|| Victor Salva || |- |CQ||Roman Coppola|| |- |No Such Thing||Hal Hartley|| |- |Suriyothai||Chatrichalerm Yukol|| |- | rowspan="2" |||Pumpkin||Anthony Abrams and Adam Larson Broder|| |- |Assassination Tango||Robert Duvall|| |- | rowspan="2" |||Lost in Translation||Sofia Coppola|| |- |Jeepers Creepers 2||Victor Salva|| |- |||Kinsey||Bill Condon||Production company (uncredited)|| |- | rowspan="2" |||Marie Antoinette||Sofia Coppola|| rowspan="22" |Production company|| |- |The Good Shepherd||Robert De Niro|| |- |||Youth Without Youth||Francis Ford Coppola|| |- |||Tetro||Francis Ford Coppola|| |- |||Somewhere||Sofia Coppola|| |- |||Twixt||Francis Ford Coppola||"American Zoetrope: Films", zoetrope.com. Retrieved 2023-07-17. |- | rowspan="2" |||A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III||Roman Coppola|| |- |On the Road||Walter Salles|| |- | rowspan="2" |||Palo Alto||Gia Coppola|| |- |The Bling Ring||Sofia Coppola|| |- |||Life After Beth||Jeff Baena|| |- | rowspan="2" |||A Very Murray Christmas||Sofia Coppola|| |- |Last Days in the Desert||Rodrigo García|| |- | rowspan="2" |||Paris Can Wait||Eleanor Coppola|| |- |Joshy||Jeff Baena|| |- |||The Beguiled||Sofia Coppola|| |- | rowspan="2" |||Love Is Love Is Love||Eleanor Coppola|| |- |On the Rocks||Sofia Coppola|| |- | 2021 || Mainstream||Gia Coppola|| |- | rowspan=2|2023 ||Fairyland||Andrew Durham||
| Priscilla || Sofia Coppola || |- | 2024 || Megalopolis ||Francis Ford Coppola||
Television series YearTitleCreatorCompanyCreditNetworkNotesReferences1990The Outsiderscharacters by:S.E. Hintondeveloped by:S.E. HintonJoe ByrneJeb RosebrookZoetrope StudiosProduction CompanyFoxco-production with Papazian-Hirsch Entertainment1997The OdysseyAndrei Konchalovskybased on Odyssey by:HomerAmerican ZoetropeProduction Company (as American Zoetrope San Francisco)NBCminiseries; co-production with Hallmark Entertainment1998Moby DickAnton DietherFranc RoddamBenedict Fitzgeraldbased on Moby-Dick by:Herman MelvilleProduction CompanyUSA Networkminiseries; co-production with Hallmark Entertainment, Nine Network Australia and USA Pictures1998–2001First WaveChris BrancatoSci-Fi Channelco-production with Sugar Entertainment2003PlatinumJohn RidleySofia CoppolaUPNco-production with The Greenblatt/Janollari Studio, International Famous Players Radio Picture Corporation and Eye Productions2004–2007The 4400René EchevarriaScott PetersUSA Networkco-production with Renegade 83, Viacom Productions (season 1), Paramount Network Television (season 2) and CBS Paramount Network Television (seasons 3–4)2014–2018Mozart in the Junglebased on Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music by:Blair Tindalldeveloped by:Roman CoppolaJason SchwartzmanAlex TimbersPaul WeitzAmazon Videoco-production with Depth of Field, Picrow and Amazon Studios
Cafe Zoetrope In the building lobby, Coppola operates a small Italian café, Cafe Zoetrope, featuring Inglenook Estate wine and memorabilia from his films. Earlier, the building had been the location of Enrico Banducci's "hungry i" nightclub.
The neighborhood is well known for its cafes and its writers. Coppola wrote much of the screenplay for The Godfather'' in the nearby Caffe Trieste and Lawrence Ferlinghetti'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 Academic Works.
References
External links