Columbia to Distribute Orion Films Abroad

In its first bid to beef up its international operations since being acquired by Sony Corp., Columbia Pictures Entertainment says it has agreed to provide overseas distribution for Orion Pictures.

The New York-based company said it will make a $175-million advance payment to Orion as part of the deal, which covers the distribution of Orion’s next 50 home video releases, six years of theatrical films, as well as the licensing of rights for a number of features in Orion’s television library.

“The overseas market is an expanding marketplace that is very, very hungry for U.S. product,” said Allan J. Levine, president and chief executive for Columbia, which mostly handles the international distribution of its own films. “It was extremely important for us to have a steady flow of (film) product into that marketplace.”

In trading Monday on the New York Stock Exchange, Orion’s stock closed at $18.125, up 50 cents.

The sale and distribution of U.S. feature films overseas has become an estimated $4.4-billion market, according to the Motion Picture Assn. of America. Spurred by the burgeoning worldwide market in home videocassette recorders, as well as the upcoming unification of 12 European economies in 1992, many major studios and film distributors have rushed into the overseas market.

Besides Columbia’s Tri-Star Film Distributor’s unit, three other concerns compete to distribute films overseas: The biggest, United International Pictures, is a London-based joint venture set up by Universal Pictures, Gulf & Western’s Paramount Pictures and MGM/UA Communications Co. It holds exclusive rights to distribute outside the United States all movies made by the three film companies. It competes with Warner Bros., which distributes Warner Bros. and Disney products, and with 20th Century Fox.

Films from Orion, whose hit movies have included “Platoon,” “RoboCop” and “Bull Durham,” have been handled overseas by a variety of distributors during the past eight years, including Warner Bros. International in Japan and 20th Century Fox Film International in Italy. Orion President Bob Meyers said that with the rapid growth in overseas markets, his company decided it was more efficient to select one distributor to handle its films.