Atlantic Releasing Corporation was an independent B-Movie producer mainly active in the 1980s.
Founded by Tom Coleman and Michael Rosenblatt in 1974, Atlantic initially focused on arthouse and foreign films, but the unexpected success of Valley Girl in 1983 led them to focus on producing their own low-budget films, and quickly found further success with Night of the Comet the following year.
Atlantic expanded quickly; in 1985, they launched a division called Clubhouse Pictures, designed to capitalize on the family market off the heels of another early success, an English release of The Smurfs and the Magic Flute, and signed a deal with Paramount for home video and television rights to their movies. That year also saw the release of their biggest success, Teen Wolf, which went on to become a franchise.
Just as soon as it grew, however, Atlantic quickly came crashing down thanks to a series of box office bombs; The Garbage Pail Kids Movie in particular found itself pulled from theaters just weeks after its release amid protests from parents and Moral Guardians over its content and Merchandise-Driven nature. By the end of the decade, the company was no more, being bought out by Kartes Video Communications while most of its library was bought out by Island Alive, the film division of Island Records. Island Alive itself was eventually absorbed into the Epic Film Collection, a massive library of films owned by Crédit Lyonnais as a result of numerous independent firms defaulting on their loans. Polygram Filmed Entertainment bought this library in 1997 before being itself acquired by Seagram, who then sold the Epic library, Atlantic's films included, to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer with the rest of the pre-1996 Polygram library, who manages the library though Orion Pictures. Paramount would retain the television rights to the Atlantic library for a while, but these now rest with MGM as well. In the case of certain films, particularly those Atlantic merely distributed, the rights have since reverted to their respective producers.
Films produced or distributed by Atlantic Releasing include:
- City Limits
- The Garbage Pail Kids Movie
- He-Man and She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword
- Here Come The Littles
- Night of the Comet
- Nineteen Eighty-Four
- Peter No-Tail In America (American Dub)note
- The Smurfs and the Magic Flute
- Starchaser: The Legend of Orin
- Teen Wolf
- Teen Wolf Too
- Valley Girl
Films produced or released by Clubhouse Pictures include:
- The Adventures of Mark Twain
- The Adventures of the American Rabbit
- GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords
- Heathcliff: The Movie
