Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (WBEI), also commonly known as simply Warner Bros., is an American multinational entertainment corporation and the flagship holder of the Warner Bros. brand owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, it was formed on December 3, 2002 to incorporate the Warner Bros.-branded film and television assets of then-parent company AOL Time Warner (later the second iteration of Time Warner and then, WarnerMedia).
Warner Bros. Entertainment is best known for its main studio compositions, the Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group for the films/movies and the Warner Bros. Television Group for television. The Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group houses Warner Bros. Pictures, one of the "Big Five" major American film studios and the third oldest film studio in the United States still in operation (after Paramount Pictures and Universal Pictures, both founded in 1912), as well as the original flagship Warner Bros. brand holder and its distribution arm. The Motion Picture Group also includes New Line Cinema, Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, and Warner Bros. Clockwork. Similarly, the Warner Bros. Television Group houses Warner Bros. Television, the main Warner Bros.-branded television production and distribution company which holds a 12% ownership interest in the CW broadcast television network co-owned with Paramount Skydance and the Nexstar Media Group and is also the parent company of Alloy Entertainment.
Contents
History
Predecessors
This company is indirectly derived from the original Warner Bros. Pictures, which was founded in 1923 by four brothers: Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack L. Warner. The company established itself as a leader in the American film industry, before diversifying into animation, television and video games.
On June 30, 1992, Time Warner transferred most of its Warner Bros. Inc. subsidiary's assets, including the film, television production and cable businesses, into Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P. (TWEC), a new limited partnership with Toshiba and C. Itoh & Co. where each invested US$500 million for a 6.25% share. The deal was intended to relieve debt pressure from the merger between Time Inc. and Warner Communications two years earlier.
In 1993, US West joined the partnership with a US$2.5 billion investment for a 25% share. By 1996, TWEC was owned 74.49% by Time Warner and the remainder by US West.
Current company incarnation
In March 2003, AOL Time Warner regained full control of the Warner Bros. film and television production assets from TWEC and placed them in the newly formed Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. wholly-owned subsidiary, which had been formed on December 3, 2002. TWEC retained only Time Warner Cable, which was eventually spun off.
Over the following 2 decades, Warner Bros. Entertainment gained new assets that came from acquisitions by its then-parent company, including most notably the 1996 acquisition of Turner Broadcasting System (Turner). Turner's acquired film studios Castle Rock Entertainment and New Line Cinema were transferred to WBEI in 1997 and 2008 respectively, and Turner's own Turner Entertainment Co. in 2006. AT&T acquired Time Warner on June 15, 2018, renamed it WarnerMedia and had Turner broken up, with cable television assets like Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Adult Swim and Turner Classic Movies also transferred to WBEI on March 4, 2019. Cartoon Network Studios and Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe were transferred to the Warner Bros. Television Group division following WarnerMedia's merger with Discovery, Inc. on April 8, 2022.