What is the French Hollywood?

What was the point of Disney creating Hollywood Pictures?

• In 1984 Walt Disney Pictures created the imprint 'Touchstone Pictures' in order to release films to a more mature audience that wouldn't fit the Walt Disney brand name. It was a big success, and in 1990 they started a second imprint -- Hollywood Pictures. What was the point? If Touchstone was a success, what did a second imprint do for them? Why weren't films released under the 'Hollywood' banner just simply released as 'Touchstone' films? For example, the most successful film released under the 'Hollywood Pictures' banner was 'The Sixth Sense'. Couldn't 'The Sixth Sense' has just carried the 'Touchstone' label?? I was just reading the Wikipedia pages for both Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures, and it just says, "Because of the success of Disney's mature film division Touchstone Pictures, yet another Disney film label was established as Hollywood Pictures in 1990. The company's first release was Arachnophobia (1990).". It doesn't say WHY. I'm really curious. What was the advantage of having two different labels for PG rated and more mature films? Wouldn't one have done the trick? I mean I understand 'Touchstone' because the Disney brand name is so associated with children's and family fare, but why two? Does anyone know?

• Answer:

  I've often wondered the same thing. I can think of a few possibilities: 1. As you mentioned, Disney needed a studio name they could use other than "Disney", since, as one exec put it: "If you put the Disney name on "Deep Throat", mothers would buy the video for their kids." For this, they first created Touchstone, to basically hide the fact that Disney was venturing into non-family fare. But Touchstone had been around since 1984 (when they made "Splash"), and by then, word had gotten out, and just about everyone realized that Touchstone was a part of Disney. Perhaps the old worries resumed, and they thought they needed a new alias for their more mature films. 2. Perhaps the movies put out under the Hollywood Pictures label were more adult in nature than those put out under the Touchstone label. Although their first venture, "Arachnophobia" was PG, many of the Hollywood Picture releases were rated R. I haven't made a studio by studio comparison, but perhaps they planned to put out their R-rated films under the Hollywood label, and their PG movies out as "Touchstone". 3. Cost. Taking a quick look at the list of Hollywood Pictures releases, one thing I note is that (with the exception, again, of "Arachnophobia") most of the films seem to be low-budget - at least compared to the usual Disney film. Perhaps they wanted Hollywood Pictures to concentrate on low-budget films, with a lower marketing cost, that they thought might not quite measure up to their usual Disney or Touchstone fare. Whatever the reason, it hasn't been a huge success. At its height, in 1993, Hollywood Pictures released 11 films that year. But it released none at all in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and only a small handful since then.