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Alliance Atlantis

Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc. (formerly traded as TSX:AAC) was a Toronto-based Canadian-American media company that operated primarily as a specialty service operator in Canada. Alliance Atlantis also had offices in Halifax, Los Angeles, London, Dublin, Madrid, Barcelona, Shannon, and Sydney.

Alliance Atlantis was acquired by Canwest Global Communications and an affiliate of Goldman Sachs in 2007. The movie business then operated independently as Alliance Films, headquartered in Montreal (subsequently sold to Entertainment One), and the international television distribution businesses is now owned by Echo Bridge Entertainment.

All of the former Alliance Atlantis specialty networks are now owned by Shaw Communications through its Shaw Media Division (formerly CW Media) as of October 27, 2010. The films division was later acquired by Entertainment One group and folded into eOne on January 9, 2013.

Formation and history

Alliance Atlantis was formed in 1998 from the merger of two former production companies, Alliance Communications and Atlantis Communications, both founded in 1985. The merger was a bit unusual in that the head of Atlantis, Michael MacMillan, became CEO of the new firm even though Atlantis was the smaller partner in the transaction; Alliance's CEO, Robert Lantos, was specifically interested in moving back into a production role. As President and Board Director of the subsequent combined Alliance Atlantis, Lewis Rose was responsible for leading the teams which arranged the merger financing of $545 million and which achieved in excess of $20 million in savings and synergies from the combination of the two companies in the year following the merger. (The merger was also parodied on Made in Canada, when that show's Pyramid Productions merged with a company called Prodigy.)

Motion Picture Production Code

The Motion Picture Production Code was the set of industry moral guidelines that was applied to most United States motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. It is also popularly, albeit inaccurately, known as the Hays Code, after Will H. Hays, who was the president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) from 1922 to 1945. Under Hays' leadership, the MPPDA, later known as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), adopted the Production Code in 1930 and began strictly enforcing it in 1934. The Production Code spelled out what was acceptable and what was unacceptable content for motion pictures produced for a public audience in the United States.

From 1934 to 1954, the code was closely identified with Joseph Breen, the administrator appointed by Hays to enforce the code in Hollywood. The film industry followed the guidelines set by the code well into the late 1950s, but during this time the code began to weaken due to the combined impact of television, influence from foreign films, bold directors (such as Otto Preminger) pushing the envelope, and intervention from the courts, including the Supreme Court. In 1968, after several years of minimal enforcement, the outdated Production Code was replaced by the MPAA film rating system.