Warner Bros. Pictures

Background

Warner Bros. Pictures was founded in 1918 by the Warner brothers Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack - Polish-Jewish brothers who emigrated from Krasnosielc, Poland to Ontario, Canada. It is the third-oldest American movie studio in continuous operation, after Paramount Pictures, founded on May 8, 1912 as Famous Players Film Corporation, and Universal Studios, founded on June 8, 1912. Warner Bros. incorporated on April 4, 1923. The studio has been the subject to numerous acquisitions over the decades. Warner Bros. merged with Seven Arts Productions in 1967, renaming it to "Warner Bros.-Seven Arts". The studio was purchased by Kinney National Co. in 1969, which was later reincorporated as Warner Communications in 1972 when it spun-off its non-entertainment assets, due to a financial scandal over its parking operations. Since 1989, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner (WarnerMedia since 2018), formed as a merger between the conglomerates Time, Inc. and Warner Communications. In 1992, Time Warner formed "Time Warner Entertainment" by merging all of its entertainment operations for the first time. Internet giant AOL merged with Time Warner in January 2001, renaming the company as AOL Time Warner, but in summer 2003, the conglomerate name was reverted back to Time Warner (often with no space in between the words) due to lawsuits and losing $99 billion from the collapse of the dot-com bubble. AOL officially split from Time Warner in 2009. In 2018, after numerous legal hurdles, AT&T acquired Time Warner. Subsequently, it was rebranded "WarnerMedia". The status of the acquisition was settled in February 2019 when it was upheld on appeal and the Justice Department declined to pursue their case against the acquisition any further. Today, with the exceptions of some films WB merely distributed, such as Sayonara (currently owned by the estate of the producer), Moby Dick (currently owned by MGM), Rope (currently owned by Universal Studios) and Hondo (owned by Batjac Productions with distribution exclusively handled by Paramount), the pre-1950 catalog is held by WB subsidiary Turner Entertainment Co.

1st Logo (November 17, 1925-August 30, 1929)

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Nicknames: "CGI Shield II", "Shield in the Sky III", "The Reflection of the WB Backlot II", "Bannerless Shield", "The AT&T Shield"

Logo: It starts the same way as the previous logo but tinted blue, then we see the new Warner Bros shield without a banner swing in fully upright from the left of screen against the same cloudy sky background as the previous logo. The "WB" text reflects various other clouds. As the shield zooms out into position, the sky background fades to black and the WarnerMedia byline now reading "a WarnerMedia company" fades in below. The shield shines throughout.

Closing Variant: Just the finished logo, with "Distributed by" above and the URL below.

FX/SFX: Decent CGI.

Music/Sounds: So far, the opening theme of the movie.

Availability: Brand new. This debuted on Christopher Nolan's Tenet and recently appeared on Wonder Woman 1984 albeit using a variant. Currently used in tandem with the previous logo.

Editor's Note: A good evolution of the previous logo, although it's far less grand due to the stiffer animation. It's also the 1st logo since 1972 to not have a banner around the shield.

Copyright stamps

1923-1967: Copyright © by Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc.
1934-1936: Copyright © by Warner Bros. Productions Corp.
1926-1960: Copyright © by The Vitaphone Corp. (short subjects only)
1967-1970: Copyright © by Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, Inc.
1970-1992: Copyright © by Warner Bros., Inc.
1992-2003: Copyright © by Warner Bros.
2003-: Copyright © by Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.