Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. (CPII) is an
American film production and distribution company. It was one of the so-called
Little Three among the eight
major film studios of
Hollywood's Golden Age.
Today, as part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group—owned by
Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the
Japanese
conglomerate Sony—it is one of the leading film companies in the world, a member of the so-called
Big Six. It has no connection with
CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System).
The studio, founded in 1919 as Cohn-Brandt-Cohn Film Sales by brothers Jack and
Harry Cohn and Joe Brandt, released its first
feature film in August 1922. It adopted the Columbia Pictures name in 1924 and went public two years later. In its early years a minor player in Hollywood, Columbia began to grow in the late 1920s, spurred by a successful association with director
Frank Capra.