Destination Films

Background
Destination Films is Sony Pictures' "niche" film arm that was originally founded as an independent film company by Brent Baum and Steve Stabler in 1998. Sony distributed their films on video, and following the company's closure in 2001 as a result of several box office flops, Sony revived Destination in 2002 as a label of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Destination sometimes co-releases films with Sony Pictures Classics, Samuel Goldwyn Films, and Triumph Films. Destination's film library includes independent films, art-house films, and a few anime titles such as Tekkonkinkreet, Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, and Metropolis. Currently, it is a label of Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions since 2007.

(October 22, 1999- )
Logo: On a black background with haze, we see a planet (presumably the Earth) orbiting around the sun. When the earth comes close to the sun, shadows of the letters "I", "T", "N", "I", "T", and "N" fade in and crowd around the sun and planet. The planet moves into the sun, and the letters, which are now "serif" in Trajan Pro font, move in. A bright flash occurs, and on a black background, we see the Destination logo, which is two halves of a circle split up by a line. The line has a crescent on one side and a sun on the other. The text "serif" is arranged around this line. The logo then shines.

Variants:
 * On streaming prints of Thomas and the Magic Railroad, the logo starts at the last half after the shining.
 * On several films from the company after Sony relaunched the company, the logo is zoomed in more compared to normal.

Technique: CGI animation, which is not bad for 1999.

Music/Sounds: An extended whoosh accompanied by a synth choir. Sometimes it is silent, like on Full Contact.

Music/Sounds Variants:
 * On some prints of Steamboy, it had the Screen Gems Pictures music, possibly due to an editing error since Screen Gems released the film outside of the United States.
 * On streaming prints of Thomas and the Magic Railroad, only the very last part of the music is used.

Availability: Common. It appears on several films Destination released, such as Bats, Drowning Mona, Thomas and the Magic Railroad, Metropolis, Buying the Cow, Steamboy, Eye of the Beholder, Tokyo Godfathers, MirrorMask, Accident Man (2018), and most recently, Never Back Down: Revolt (2021). This oddly doesn't appear on Brothers in Arms (2005), despite the fact that they produced it (and the opening credits are mentioning them), as Sony Pictures Home Entertainment's logo appears instead.

Legacy: This logo has a very unique design atypical of the usual aesthetics found in Sony's logos, and still holds up well today, which contributes to its longevity. The only downside is that this logo doesn't seem to have a fully digital print of it in existence, as even on recent films with this logo, it has film scratches and other artifacts that stick out when shown next to logos that clearly use digital sources. This could, however, be because Destination wasn't technically a subsidiary of Sony until 2002, which could also explain why not only does a version with the Sony Corporation logo transitioning to this not exist, but also why it's always remained bylineless regardless of Sony's ownership.