Largo Entertainment
Logophile and CuriousGeorge60
Editions by
thehugetvfan, Shadeed A. Kelly and AUnnamedDragon
Video captures courtesy of
LogicSmash, No. and Broken Saw
Background
Largo Entertainment was a production company founded on August 21, 1989. It was run by movie producer Lawrence Gordon and was backed by Japanese electronics firm Victor Company of Japan, Ltd. (JVC) in an investment that cost more than $100 million; although JVC put up the entire investment, Largo was structured to be a 50/50 joint venture between Gordon and JVC[1]. The company released their first film, Point Break, in 1991. The following year, they formed "Largo International N.V.", a short-lived international division.
In January 1994, Gordon left the company, forging a production deal with Universal Pictures[2], although Largo remained active; Gordon eventually formed his own company, Lawrence Gordon Productions. In February 1999, JVC transferred Largo's film acquisition assets to JVC Entertainment, a film subsidiary for the Japanese market, and shut down the company's foreign sales operation[3], effectively ending the company; Largo's final films were still released under the company's name.
Largo's film library was acquired by Intermedia Films in March 2001[4]; today, Warner Bros. Pictures (through Warner Bros. Home Entertainment) holds video rights to most of the Intermedia-owned Largo Entertainment library, with a few exceptions.
Logo (July 12, 1991-February 15, 2000)
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Visuals: On a black background, a red line scrolls down. As it does this, the word "LARGO", in a font that resembles Times New Roman and with the letters connecting to one another, rises up. They both rest in the middle of the screen. Then the word "E N T E R T A I N M E N T" crawls down from below the red line and stops. The byline "IN ASSOCIATION WITH JVC ENTERTAINMENT, INC.", with the JVC logo in red and between "WITH" and "JVC", fades in below. The end result is this:
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E N T E R T A I N M E N T
IN ASSOCIATION WITH JVC JVC ENTERTAINMENT, INC.
Variants:
- For the company's short-lived international division, the word "E N T E R T A I N M E N T" is replaced with the words "I N T E R N A T I O N A L N. V.".
- A still version of this logo appears at the end of John Carpenter's Vampires (the animated logo appears at the beginning).
Technique: CGI.
Audio: A synthesized fanfare with synth "jingles" that play throughout the piece until the JVC byline fades in. The "jingles" play seven times before the fanfare switches to a different key for the remainder of the theme. When the JVC byline fades in, the theme ends with what sounds like a synth hum. The music was composed by Mark Isham with a Casio FZ-1 sampling synthesizer.
Audio Variant: On some films (e.g. Vampires), the opening theme of the movie is heard.
Availability:
- Seen on films from Largo Entertainment such as Point Break (1991), The Super, Dr. Giggles, Judgment Night, Timecop, The Getaway (1994), Mulholland Falls, Omega Doom, Adrenalin: Fear the Rush, Meet Wally Sparks and John Carpenter's Vampires.
- On current prints of some of these, with examples being Timecop and Unlawful Entry, this is replaced by the Intermedia logo, while leaving the respective original distributor's logo (the 1981 20th Century Fox and 1991 Universal Pictures logos, for example) intact; on the Blu-ray of Timecop, the Universal logo is replaced with the 2003 Warner Bros. shield.
- The "INTERNATIONAL N.V." variant was seen on international prints of Malcolm X (Largo co-financed and handled the foreign distribution of the film).
- The last film to use this logo was Grey Owl, starring Pierce Brosnan; the film also happens to be Largo's final production.
- Among the few films that are known to retain this are Point Break and Vampires; it is retained on at least AMC's print and the now out-of-print 20th Century Home Entertainment Blu-ray release of the former and BBC America's print of the latter.
References
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