
The first Underworld movie, in which vampires and werewolves have gun battles in an unnamed metropolis, was an aesthetically influential hit for Screen Gems, affecting a shiny-pleather imitation of Matrix sleekness and obviously inspiring the middling likes of Priest and Legion. In celebration of that spirit, and the studio’s upcoming birthday, here are the 15 best movies from throughout its 25-year history, judged on both individual merit and their place within the Screen Gems identity: The Pope’s Exorcist isn’t one of the studio’s very best movies, but its flashes of craft amidst silliness and mercenary franchise-baiting are representative of the Screen Gems spirit.
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Now even an Oscar winner and household name like Russell Crowe is willing to cheerfully motor through a goofy Screen Gems exorcism movie on a scooter, having so much fun that he willingly implies that there could be nearly 200 more adventures to come. Talented directors have made pit stops here, other figures have made Screen Gems a default home Milla Jovovich would have a career either way, but at Screen Gems, she’s a star. Its first film was the John Sayles thriller Limbo its second was the starry terrorism potboiler Arlington Road. But Screen Gems has carved out an identity for itself – there is certainly an easily recognizable “Screen Gems movie” vibe and The Pope’s Exorcist very much has it – while also throwing some genre curveballs.

And, yes, plenty of low-rent remakes of classics like Carrie, Straw Dogs and The Stepfather. Indeed, while many Screen Gems movies involve vampires, werewolves, exorcisms, and killer angels, their 25 years’ worth of relatively quiet middle-movie production also dabbles in other areas bigger studios have traditionally overlooked or disrespected when it was expedient to do so: Thrillers driven by Black talent, like Takers or The Perfect Guy films by women directors, like Jane Campion’s maligned-then-reclaimed In the Cut youth-culture pictures like Stomp the Yard or Easy A romantic comedies like About Last Night or Friends with Benefits sorta-musicals like Burlesque and Country Strong. In other words, Screen Gems makes middle movies – exactly the kind of not-quite-low-budget fodder that so many studios have gleefully abandoned in the pursuit of tentpoles. Screen Gems was later resurrected as a genre arm for Sony, making movies typically bigger in scale than Sony Classics but not as big-ticket as Columbia or TriStar.
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A series of very ’80s mergers and acquisitions, including a purchase by the Coca-Cola Corporation and a sale to then-separate Tristar, which brought Columbia and the Screen Gems name to their current home: As divisions of the Sony corporation.


Slightly over a decade later, Screen Gems became Columbia’s entry into television production, where it flourished for 25 years before the brand was rechristened Columbia Pictures Television. Later, Columbia Pictures distributed cartoons from Winkler Pictures, then purchased a stake in the company, before finally acquiring it outright in 1939. Winkler, who worked with Walt Disney before he started his own outfit. It was over a century ago that the company began as an animation studio founded by Margaret J. Though Screen Gems celebrates that quarter-century anniversary in December, its origins stretch back far further than 1998. Anderson built, a clearinghouse for action, horror, action-horror, action-fantasy, action-fantasy-horror, and other movies that weren’t getting much respect when the division’s current incarnation emerged nearly 25 years ago. But genre fans should know Screen Gems well, even if they’ve come to dread it: This is the house that Paul W.S. It’s arguably the least immediately recognizable studio logo under the Sony umbrella, after the classic Columbia Pictures, the ’80s/’90s mainstay TriStar (it’s the one with the flying-horse logo), and arthouse institution Sony Pictures Classics.

Both of those series appear to be in a holding pattern maybe it’s up to Russell Crowe to keep the Screen Gems brand alive.Ĭasual moviewatchers would be forgiven but not having much brand association with Screen Gems. (The characters all but say “one down, 199 to go.”) This might sound like empty, nutso bravado, and it probably is, but then again, The Pope’s Exorcist comes from Screen Gems, a Sony subsidiary that has produced seven Resident Evil movies and five Underworld movies, among other mashed-up monsters. The Pope’s Exorcist closes with an exciting brazen implication that it may be the first of 200 movies in which an exorcist played by Russell Crowe will investigate pockets of hell-based activity here on Earth.
