Batjac Productions

Batjac Productions is an independent film production company founded by John Wayne in the early 1950s as a vehicle for Wayne to produce as well as star in movies. Its first release was Big Jim McLain with Warner Brothers in 1952, and its final film was also with Warner Brothers, McQ, in 1974. Today, Gretchen Wayne, wife of the actor’s late son, Michael Wayne, who managed and owned the company for over 30 years before his death in 2003, is its owner and president.

About the company

Wayne and producer Robert Fellows founded Batjac in 1952 as Wayne/Fellows Productions. When Fellows left the company several years later, Wayne renamed the corporation after a fictitious trading company mentioned in the 1948 film Wake of the Red Witch. The company name in Wake of the Red Witch was spelled Batjak, but Wayne's secretary misspelled it as Batjac on the corporation papers, and Wayne let it stand. Having his own company gave Wayne artistic control over the films he made.

Among Batjac's productions: The Alamo, Hondo, Cahill U.S. Marshal, Big Jake, McLintock!, The Green Berets, Seven Men from Now, and McQ.

This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Batjac_Productions

Latest News for: batjac

The director of ‘Halloween’ and ‘The Fog’ once wrote a script for John Wayne

The Examiner 01 Jun 2016

There are very few directors who, like John Carpenter, can pride themselves for having invented a genre, in his case, the modern Slasher film ... Friday The 13th (1980), He Knows You’re Alone (1980), My Bloody Valentine (1981) and April Fool’s Day (1986), are just a few of them ... Duke’s production company, Batjac, actually optioned Carpenter’s early western screenplay ‘Blood River’ ... ....

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