History
Founded in 1981 as a public company, Image began as a distributor of Laserdiscs, whose sound and picture quality surpassed that of VHS and Beta, the dominant tape formats of the time. Image successfully secured exclusive output deals with major studios such as Universal Studios, 20th Century Fox, and The Walt Disney Company and grew to become the dominant distributor of the format.
As the 1990s came to a close and Laserdiscs gave way to DVD, Image re-focused on the fledgling format that quickly came to dominate the home video marketplace. While studios were busy managing the transition from VHS to DVD, Image began to acquire DVD rights to long-form music concert programs, television programming, foreign films and a broad array of special interest programming, all of which were being ignored by the major studios and music labels.
Image continued to work with its long term partner, The Criterion Collection, as well as hundreds of independent content producers and rights holders to bring products to the marketplace. By the 10th anniversary of the DVD, Image has once again established itself as a dominant distributor of independently produced programs. In 2008, Image began to expand its release schedule to include feature films..
In May 2011, Image entered into in-house film and television production agreement. Its latest theatrical film is 44 Inch Chest. It has also entered an agreement with Sony Pictures Entertainment to re-release some of their titles, such as Cowboy Bebop: The Movie. Most recently, the company announced the pick-up of The Tall Man starring Jessica Biel.
On April 2, 2012, it was announced that RLJ Acquisition, Inc. had entered into an agreement to acquire Image Entertainment as well as Acorn Media and plan to merge the two companies together. The two companies will operate under the banner RLJ Entertainment.
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