Castle Rock Entertainment

Background

Castle Rock Entertainment was founded in 1987 by Martin Shafer, actor and director Rob Reiner, Andy Scheinman, Glenn Padnick and Alan Horn, with Columbia Pictures as their original strategic partner. Early in the studio's history, Nelson Entertainment co-financed their films until 1991, when New Line Cinema took over their duties (after Nelson was sold to New Line). On Christmas Day 1993, Castle Rock was acquired by Turner Broadcasting System and would become a part of Time Warner when the two along with New Line Cinema merged with them on October 10, 1996. In 1999, Warner Bros. Pictures gained distribution rights from Sony Pictures Entertainment/Columbia Pictures. Castle Rock's first release was Winter People in 1989, but no logo was used until When Harry Met Sally.... Castle Rock is currently a subsidiary of the Warner Bros. Entertainment. unit of Time Warner. The home media rights to the pre-1994 Castle Rock library (which was part of Nelson's library) were sold to Epic Productions, which incorporated it into its Gamma library, and then to PolyGram Filmed Entertainment; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquired these rights in January 1999 after purchasing the pre-March 31, 1996 PolyGram library (including their back library) (exceptions are A Few Good Men, In the Line of Fire,and North, co-productions with Columbia Pictures that remained with the studio and The Spirit of '76, which Castle Rock produced and has a copyright holder alongside Black Diamond Productions, owned by Warner Bros.). Warner Bros. Television does own the television rights to most Castle Rock films. The post-1994 library is owned by Warner Bros. (except for distribution rights of The Story of Us, The Last Days of Disco, and international rights to The American President, all of which are owned by Universal Studios, the original distributor). Castle Rock retains the copyright to nearly all of its films. Sony Pictures Television holds the rights to Seinfeld, a Castle Rock co-produced show.

1st Logo (July 14, 1989-July 29, 1994)

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Nicknames: "The Lighthouse II", "CGI Lighthouse", "CGI Light Tower", "CGI Majestic Tower"

Logo: Same as the previous logo, but in CGI. We see a yellow light on a black background rotating counterclockwise, then the background fades to a blue and orange gradient sky with water to reveal a lighthouse and a house. The yellow light turns from left to right while the plain light orange sun rises up and sweeps around to reveal the words "CASTLE ROCK ENTERTAINMENT", in the same font as the previous logo and colored in plain yellow, below the lighthouse. The company name now zooms out from the bottom of the screen. The light disappears when the lighthouse and the company name stays on the logo.

Bylines: Below it, one of these five bylines fade in below the logo:

September 23, 1994-May 19, 1995: "A TURNER COMPANY" in a Helvetica font.

August 25, 1995-October 11, 1996: "A Turner Company" ("Turner" appears as the 1987 Turner Broadcasting logo, and the rest of the text is in the same font as it.)
December 20, 1996-February 14, 1997: (Bylineless)
January 30, 1998-December 14, 2000: "A Time Warner Company"
September 28, 2001-April 30, 2004: "An AOL Time Warner Company"
July 2, 2004-July 13, 2018: "A TimeWarner Company" ("TimeWarner" appears as the corporate logo; the rest of the text appears in FF Meta typeface).

Variants:

On Sleuth, the logo isn't animated.
There is an international version, which appears in closing credits. The logo there is black and white, has "Distributed by" above and INTERNATIONAL below.

FX/SFX: The lighthouse and the company name zoom-out, which are all done in CGI that is very ahead of its time.

Music/Sounds: A re-orchestrated version of the previous logo's fanfare (also composed by Marc Shaiman) that sounds more dramatic and powerful than before. Like before, music from any given soundtrack is also used. The first three films with this logo; The Shawshank Redemption, Before Sunrise and Dolores Claiborne respectively, used the opening theme of the movie instead of the regular theme; the regular theme was first used the next year on Forget Paris.

Music/Sounds Variants:

On some current prints of 1989 to 1994 films, this plasters the 1989 logo but keeps its original music, with one example being Crackle's print of Misery (that also being seen when The Weather Channel aired the movie back in 2009). The 1989 theme was also used on Beyond Rangoon.
On the 2014 film And So It Goes, the fanfare was re-arranged to sound more powerful, minus the dings heard at the end.

Availability: Common on almost every Castle Rock film since The Shawshank Redemption.The early Turner variant is rare and it appears on the original Columbia TriStar Home Video VHS releases of The Shawshank Redemption, Before Sunrise and Forget Paris. It was also seen on the Warner Home Video release of The Shawshank Redemption. The second Turner logo is slightly more common and appears on The American President, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, City Hall, Alaska and Striptease. The bylineless version is seen on Waiting for Guffman, Ghost of Mississippi and Absolute Power. It also appeared on the Hamlet game for Windows. The first Time Warner byline is seen on Zero Effect, My Giant, Mickey Blue Eyes, Bait, Best in Show and Miss Congeniality. It also appeared on the original release of The Last Days of Disco and on the original video releases, but current prints replace it and the Gramercy Pictures logo with the Focus Features logo (even the last part of the logo theme that goes into the credits is muted out). The AOL Time Warner logo is seen on Hearts in Atlantis, The Majestic, The Salton Sea, Two Weeks Notice, The Adventures of Pluto Nash, Murder by Numbers, Kangaroo Jack and Envy (despite all Time Warner companies using the Time Warner byline at this point. Possibly had it due to being a delayed release). The second Time Warner byline is seen on almost all 2004-2018 films from the studio from Before Sunset to Shock and Awe, and sometimes plasters the previous and Turner-bylined logos on newer prints. The international version is rare and appeared on some older films worldwide, newer releases plaster it with newer New Line Cinema or Warner Bros. Pictures logos. Can be found on the 2000 Warner Home Video NTSC DVD release of Absolute Power. Don't expect to see this on Friends with Benefits.

Editor's Note: A good upgrade to CGI and a nice majestic remix of the theme. However, at current time, it's started to become a little dated and is due for a newer version.