Paramount Pictures in the context of "Viacom (2005–2019)"

War of the Worlds is a 2005 American science fiction action-thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Josh Friedman and David Koepp, based on H. G. Wells' 1898 novel, The War of the Worlds. Tom Cruise stars in the main role alongside Dakota Fanning, Miranda Otto, and Tim Robbins, with narration by Morgan Freeman. It follows an American dock worker who must look after his estranged children as he struggles to protect and reunite them with their mother when extraterrestrials invade Earth and devastate cities with giant war machines.

Produced by Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures, Amblin Entertainment, and Cruise/Wagner Productions, the film was shot in 73 days, using five different sound stages as well as locations in California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia. It was surrounded by a secrecy campaign so few details would be leaked before its release. Tie-in promotions were made with several companies, including Hitachi.

Hollywood, sometimes informally called Tinseltown, is a neighborhood and district in the central region of Los Angeles, California. Its name has become synonymous with the U.S. film industry and the people associated with it. Many notable film studios such as Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., and Universal Pictures are located in or near Hollywood.

Hollywood was incorporated as a municipality in 1903. The northern and eastern parts of the neighborhood were consolidated with the City of Los Angeles in 1910. Soon thereafter, the prominent film industry migrated to the area.

Michael Dammann Eisner (/ˈaɪznər/ EYEZ-nər; born March 7, 1942) is an American businessman and media proprietor who served as chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of the Walt Disney Company from September 1984 to September 2005. Prior to Disney, Eisner was president of rival film studio Paramount Pictures from 1976 to 1984, and had brief stints at the major television networks NBC, CBS, and ABC.

Eisner's 21-year stint at Disney saw the revitalization of the company's poorly performing animation studios with successful films such as The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and The Lion King (1994), a period known as the Disney Renaissance. Eisner additionally broadened the company's media portfolio by leading the acquisitions of ABC, most of ESPN and The Muppets franchise. Eisner also led major investments and expansion of the company's theme parks both domestically and globally, including the openings of Disney-MGM Studios (now Disney's Hollywood Studios) in 1989, Euro Disney (now Disneyland Paris) in 1992, Disney's Animal Kingdom in 1998, Disney's California Adventure Park and Tokyo DisneySea in 2001, Walt Disney Studios Park in 2002 and Hong Kong Disneyland in 2005.

A Society Scandal is a 1924 American silent drama film directed by Allan Dwan, and starring Gloria Swanson and Rod La Rocque. Distributed by Paramount Pictures, the film is based on a 1922 play The Laughing Lady, by Alfred Sutro which starred Ethel Barrymore in 1923 on Broadway and originally in 1922 with Edith Evans in UK.

Paramount remade the story in 1929 as The Laughing Lady an early talkie for Ruth Chatterton.

Escape from Alcatraz is a 1979 American prison drama film directed and produced by Don Siegel, that depicts the June 1962 prisoner escape from the federal penitentiary on Alcatraz Island. The screenplay, written by Richard Tuggle, is based on the 1963 nonfiction book of the same name by J. Campbell Bruce, and stars Clint Eastwood as escape ringleader Frank Lee Morris, alongside Patrick McGoohan, Fred Ward, Jack Thibeau, and Larry Hankin, with Danny Glover appearing in his film debut.

Shot on location at Alcatraz, the film marks the fifth and final collaboration between Siegel and Eastwood, following Coogan's Bluff (1968), Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), The Beguiled (1971), and Dirty Harry (1971). Released by Paramount Pictures on June 22, 1979, Escape from Alcatraz received critical acclaim from audiences and critics and was a financial success, becoming one of the highest-grossing films of 1979.

Cecil Blount DeMille (/ˈsɛsəl dəˈmɪl/; August 12, 1881 – January 21, 1959), often known in popular culture as Mr. DeMille, was an American filmmaker and actor. Between 1914 and 1958, he made 70 features, both silent and sound films. He is acknowledged as a founding father of American cinema and the most commercially successful producer-director in film history, with many films dominating the box office three or four at a time. His films were distinguished by their epic scale and by his cinematic showmanship. His silent films included social dramas, comedies, Westerns, farces, morality plays, and historical pageants.

Born in Ashfield, Massachusetts and raised in New York City, DeMille began his career as a stage actor in 1900. He later began to write and direct stage plays, a few with his older brother William de Mille, and some with Jesse L. Lasky, who was then a vaudeville producer. DeMille's first film, The Squaw Man (1914), was the first full-length feature film shot in Hollywood. Its interracial love story was commercially successful, and the film marked Hollywood as the new home of the U.S. film industry. Based on continued film successes, DeMille founded Famous Players Lasky which was later reverse merged into Paramount Pictures with Lasky and Adolph Zukor. His first biblical epic, The Ten Commandments (1923), was both a critical and commercial success; it held the Paramount revenue record for 25 years.

DreamWorks Pictures (also known as DreamWorks SKG and commonly referred to as DreamWorks) is an American film studio and distribution label of Amblin Partners. The studio was originally founded on October 12, 1994, as a live-action and animation film studio by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen (which together form the SKG of DreamWorks SKG), of which they owned 72%. The studio formerly distributed its own and third-party films. It has produced or distributed more than ten films with box-office grosses of more than $100 million each.

DreamWorks Pictures was sold to Viacom, parent of Paramount Pictures in February 2006 (this version is now named DW Studios, LLC). In 2008, DreamWorks announced its intention to end its partnership with Paramount and made a deal to produce films with India's Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, re-creating DreamWorks Pictures as an independent entity. The following year, DreamWorks entered into a distribution agreement with Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, wherein Disney would distribute DreamWorks films through the Touchstone Pictures label; the deal continued until August 2016. Since October 2016, Universal Pictures has distributed most of the films produced by DreamWorks Pictures. Currently, DreamWorks operates out of offices on the Universal Studios Lot.

Cruise/Wagner Productions, also abbreviated as C/W Productions, was an American independent film production company. It was founded by actor Tom Cruise and his agent Paula Wagner in July 1992. Wagner had been representing Cruise for eleven years before the formation of C/W Productions. The company has grossed more than $2.9 billion in box office proceeds since its inception.

Cruise/Wagner Productions was formed to give Cruise more creative freedom over his film projects and to give him the opportunity to produce and direct motion pictures. In October 1992, Cruise/Wagner Productions signed an exclusive three-year multi-picture financing and distribution deal with Paramount Pictures. The deal was renewed and expanded several times over the next fourteen years. In August 2006 Sumner Redstone, chairman of Viacom (parent company of Paramount Pictures) terminated that relationship citing Cruise's comments in the media about psychiatry, anti-depressants and Brooke Shields' handling of postpartum depression, and his taking up Scientology. However, the termination may have been more about money than anything else. Within a week, Daniel Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskins and two hedge funds, secured financial backing to buy the company.

Paramount Skydance Corporation (doing business as Paramount) is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate. It is headquartered at the Paramount Pictures lot in the Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, with offices at the previous Skydance Media headquarters in Santa Monica, California and the previous Paramount Global headquarters at One Astor Plaza in New York City.

The company was formed on August 7, 2025 by David Ellison, through the merger of Paramount Global, National Amusements, and Skydance Media. The company trades under the ticker symbol "PSKY" on the Nasdaq.