First Independent Films Story (UK)
First Independent Films was formed in 1990 by Welsh ITV franchise holder HTV following its acquisition of the British arm of Vestron Video International. The company, run by the father and son team of Michael and Martin Myers, continued Vestron’s habitude with covering some very wide and vast genre territories, and several high-profile licensing deals, despite its small size.
One of the deals it inherited from Vestron was with Rob Reiner’s then-newly-formed Castle Rock Entertainment, which supplied it the UK rights to “Misery”, a Stephen King adaptation that became a major cult classic all over the world, “Honeymoon in Vegas”, via a sublabel called Reflective Film Distribution, and the Billy Crystal vehicles “Mr. Saturday Night” and “City Slickers”. Castle Rock began alternating between PolyGram and Guild for UK video rights in 1993 then fully switched UK video distributors to Columbia TriStar in 1994.
First Independent also had a deal with Atlanta cable mogul Ted Turner via Turner Pictures Worldwide. This gave First Independent UK rights to the entire Hanna-Barbera library. Among the titles from the library that First Independent issued were “The Flintstones”, “Scooby-Doo”, “Hong Kong Phooey”, “Yogi Bear”, “Richie Rich”, “Tom and Jerry Kids”, “Wacky Races”, “Captain Planet and the Planeteers”, “Tom and Jerry: The Movie”, and the only known official VHS releases of “Wait Till Your Father Gets Home” and “The Banana Splits and Friends Show”.
First Independent also had deals with HBO, which gave it UK rights to “The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom”, “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” and “Ricochet”, Penta Pictures, which allowed it UK distribution of such films as “Night and the City”, “29th Street” and the Tom Selleck bomb “Folks!”, Emshell Producers, the makers of all the direct-to-video Ernest films, and Spelling Films, from whom it acquired UK distribution of “Night Falls on Manhattan”.
One of First Independent’s most notable deals was with New Line Cinema, which it shared with Entertainment Film Distributors. This would reap huge rewards for the company in 1995, when it ended up with the British distribution rights to Jim Carrey’s third major film, “Dumb and Dumber”. It proved to be the most successful film First Independent ever released in the UK, boosting the company to a profit of £1.7 million on sales of £16 million.
First Independent also produced its own films. Most of them, “Let Him Have It”, “Raining Stones”, “Naked”, “Bhaji on the Beach”, “Keep the Aspidistra Flying”, “House of America”, and “The Last of the High Kings”, were very well-received. Others, such as “Bad Behaviour”, “Crimetime”, and “Boston Kickout” weren’t. One film, a Bob Hoskins-directed all-star family adventure titled “Rainbow”, was the first film ever done digitally. It was filmed in high definition with the first Solid State Electronic Cinematography cameras Sony built and with 35 minutes of digital processing and visuals.
In 1996, First Independent, as part of HTV, was acquired by United News and Media, corporate parent of the Daily Express, and made a £1.6 million profit on sales of £1.1 million on sales of £17 million. That year, Ted Turner sold all his assets, including New Line and Hanna-Barbera, to Time Warner, leading Warner Bros. to swipe all of the Turner-related UK video contracts from First Independent. New Line, for its part, went back to being exclusively tied to Entertainment Film Distributors in the UK. The loss of the UK rights to Turner products marked the beginning of the end for First Independent.
The next year, First Independent reported a loss of some £400,350 on sales of £13 million. One of its most notable events that year was the UK distribution of Ridley Scott’s “G.I. Jane”, starring Demi Moore as a woman sent to undergo special operations training akin to the U.S. Navy Seals. First Independent lost some £2.7 million on this bomb, which took down Ms. Moore’s time on the Hollywood A-list and First Independent with it.
On 22 February 1998, Michael Myers died from an undisclosed illness. Three days later, United News and Media decided to put First Independent up for sale. It wound up in the hands of the Sony Corporation of Japan, which owned Columbia TriStar Home Video and the Columbia and TriStar film studios. Sony then proceeded to shut the company down. The last film to be released with the First Independent logo was an early Lionsgate title named “Savior”. The last releases under that name overall were the Andy García vehicle “Just the Ticket” and Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s “Orgazmo”. Columbia TriStar continued to use the First Independent name for a few years, mainly on reissues of its 450-title back catalog product.
The videography linked herein was compiled from eBay listings, research done independently and YouTube uploads of First Independent’s VHS openings, many of which displayed the catalogue number on screen before the copyright warning, a trait carried over from Vestron. For those that did not, or for which I could find no picture despite the knowledge of its existence, I employed some speculative guessing in a number of areas, which may lead the videography to be corrected if necessary.
To see a videography of Vestron releases before the HTV buyout, click here. Note that not all of them were released in the UK and some that were used different catalogue numbers or came from a different company.
