Entertainment Film Distributors/In Video story (UK)

The EFD/EIV story is that of the Green family, whose patriarch was Michael L. Green, a veteran producer and distributor who was in the film business since he was a teenager in the 1930s. He formed a company called Variety in 1972; it distributed such classics as Pink Flamingos and Flesh Gordon to great success at the pub. He closed it down in 1978, joining his sons Nigel and Trevor Green in forming Entertainment Film Distributors in 1978. Its first distributed films were The Inglorious Bastards (which later became the title of a Quentin Tarantino film, minus "The"), What's Up Superdoc! and the highly successful Terror. In 1983, it formed Entertainment in Video. EFD/EIV was headquartered at 27 Soho Square in London and had a phone number of 071-439 1979.

In the early 1980s, the films EFD released had hit or miss tendencies, its releases including the slasher film Rosemary's Killer, the crime drama Funny Money, Mutant and Code Name: Wild Geese. Its first major success came when it released the film Teen Wolf which was produced by Atlantic Releasing Corporation (no relation to the record company) and helped contribute to its $80 million gross. ARC also got through EFD's channels the traditional/computer animated hybrid Starchaser: The Legend of Orin. Clubhouse, New World and Empire Pictures also supplied films to EFD during the decade.

In 1990, it signed a deal with New Line Cinema, becoming the UK/Ireland distributor of its films. New Line had hit it big with the Nightmare on Elm Street and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series of movies. This was to become a successful pact as it led to them honing some of the biggest films of the decade, which will be mentioned in their story, which will be published at a later date.

The next year, it would release Kickboxer 2 and the infamous Highlander II: The Quickening, which years later is one of the few to actually get 0% on Rotten Tomatoes.

In 1992, they released a remake of an Italian whodunit called Crimen that was called Once Upon a Crime (it also has 0% on RT), as well as the action film Kuffs, Split Second, Peter's Friends, and the Irish children's film Into The West.

1993 saw the German film Stalingrad, along with the New Zealand film The Piano, Boxing Helena and the infamous Super Mario Bros. It also released Weekend at Bernie's II. It also released the star-studded adaptation of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing from Kenneth Branagh.

1994 saw EFD releasing, alongside the New Line films, The Man Without a Face, Tombstone, The House of the Spirits, Tom & Viv, Brandon Lee's The Crow, Sugar Hill, the Australian-Italian comedy Bad Boy Bubby, Highlander III: The Final Dimension, Rapa-Nui and Princess Caraboo.

In 1995, it, alongside the New Line films, put out The Road to Wellville, Immortal Beloved, the crime drama Fresh, Death Machine, Haunted, The City of Lost Children, Living in Oblivion, the infamously "freely adapted" Scarlet Letter (see my Hollywood Pictures blog post), and the thriller Mad Dogs and Englishmen.

1996's offerings from EFD, alongside New Line's, included Nixon, Angus, The Fan, Space Truckers, Twelfth Night, Hard Men, and some Rysher Entertainment movies, including Kingpin and 2 Days In The Valley along with The Substitute. The next year saw Shooting Fish, Howard Stern's Private Parts, Preaching to the Perverted (banned in Ireland!), Photographing Fairies, and the horror potboiler I Know What You Did Last Summer in addiution to the New Line suite.

EFD only released two non-New Line films during 1998. One was Up 'n' Under, about an inept pub team from the 'Wheatsheaf Arms' in a rugby league sevens competition in Kingston upon Hull in England who face off against the 'Cobblers Arms' pub team and its corrupt manager. The other was The Wisdom of Crocodiles starring Jude Law as a "vampire" type in London, craving the intimacy of women. He meets a strong woman named Anne (Elina Löwensohn) and it is clearly only one of them will survive.

In 1999, EFD would add another company to their roster: USA Films. I discussed them in another blog post. That year, they complimented their New Line slate of films with The Trench, which centers on a group of young British soldiers on the eve of the WW1 Battle of the Somme in the last 48 hours. The other release of the year was This Year's Love, which is a comedy about group of thirtysomethingswalking around Camden Town swapping partners and desiring love, lust and life. Both got good reviews. Completing the year were the films Swing, You're Dead... and Mad Cows completed the EFD story for the century.

EFD/EIV was fortunate to enter the 21st century as the UK distributor of such Academy Award winning Best Pictures as The Departed, Million Dollar Baby, Gosford Park, Brokeback Mountain and The Artist. The films EFD distributed aside from New Line and USA (later Focus Features) films from 2000 on included Mike Bassett: England Manager, Ripley's Game, My Big Fat Greek Wedding (a really unexpected top-grosser for its year since it only cost $5M), The Reckoning, Ladies in Lavender, Stormbreaker, Goya's Ghosts, St Trinian's, My Week with Marilyn, and Killer Elite.

EIV lost the rights to New Line films in 2010; New Line's parents, Warner Bros., had been on a slow process to integrate the studio's films into their channels after the domestic failure of The Golden Compass. It was the primary distributor of films made by The Weinstein Company since 2008.