Indeed, movies play a great job of entertaining us, and truly all that credit goes to the production companies involved in making those movies. But these greatest Hollywood Studios, cast down a long history behind their opening logo in their movies. So, today we take your through some of the greatest secrets behind the logos of these Hollywood studios.
7. Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures was founded more than 100 years ago, as the Famous Players Film Company, which later got merged with Feature Player Company.
The very first logo designed by William Hodkinson had a single peak of mountain, encircled by 24 stars around it. Each star represented an actor or actress contracted by paramount pictures back in the days. The mountain in the logo is the Ben Lomond Mountain in Utah. The logo since then went through several changes and transformations as per time.
The logo was initially in greyscale, but went into color and finally the current logo of Paramount pictures was first released in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.
The logo was made using CGI animations. The logo starts with the stars flying to the paramount mountain and encircling it. Finally the Paramount in its new Penultimate Font style appears. The logo now consists only 22 stars which was earlier modified back in 1970s and remains till now. No specific reason for the changes in the
number of the stars, was actually provided by the paramount representatives.
6. Warner Bros Pictures
Warner Bros Studio was opened by Warner Brothers and became the first studio in Hollywood to release the first talkie film, The Jazz Singer. Warner Bros has a very interesting story behind it.
The original logo, depicted the text ‘Warner Brothers’ at the top with a shield on the center which contained WB along with the actual photo of the Burbank California Studio, where Warner Bros was first started. The logo went through several changes that accounts for more than 200 changes in just the last 15 years.
In 1972, when Saul Bass redesigned the logo of Warner Bros that had the text ‘A Warner Communications Company’ in the logo. But the logo was immediately changed due to the color similarities of color being compared to Nazi logo.
The current logo that we see is a completely CGI based logo, with a Golden Shield which contains the words WB with a band over it written as Warner Bros Pictures. But the colors and designs of the current
logo tends to change with the theme of every movie.
5. Dreamworks Studios
Dreamworks Studio was together started by Steven Spielberg, Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg and record producer David Geffen. The Dreamworks Studio logo represents a boy fishing from the moon.
The idea first struck the mind of Spielberg for the logo depicting a man fishing from the moon, which would remind people the golden days of Hollywood. Spielberg wanted the logo to be computer animated but later asked Robert Hunt to hand draw the logo. Hunt drew a logo which contained a boy instead of man fishing from the moon, to which Spielberg was clearly satisfied.
Under the logo Dreamworks, Animations SKG was written which stood for the initials of Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen. The boy in the logo is actually designer Hunt’s son. The logo of Dreamworks is nostalgic and quite popular, and conveys the message of the studio for the inner child in every person. The logo was later animated using computer
graphics and the current logo of Dreamworks is a colorful version with clear
clouds and sky in the background.
4. 20th Century Fox
William Fox founded the FOX FILM CORPORATION in 1915, but due to the company landing into bankruptcy, the company got merged with 20th Century Pictures and the monumental logo of 20th Century Fox was created.
The logo was originally painted by Emil Kosa Jr. Kosa replaced ‘Pictures Incorporate’ in the original logo of 20th Century with FOX. After a certain while, Rocky Longo repainted the logo for FOX with keeping the design as it is, but just by making it brighter and providing a clearer view to the entire logo.
In late 90s, 20th Century FOX
Pictures introduced its first animated CGI logo, with a new text – ‘A News
Corporation Group’ added at the bottom.
3. Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures was founded as Cohn-Brandt-Cohn Film Sales, which was later in 1924 changed to Columbia Pictures.
The original logo of CBC films was really simple and sketchy in design. The torch lady that we usually see in the Columbia pictures logo is inspired from the Lady Columbia who is the forgotten female symbol of the United States. Before the Uncle Sams, it was the Lady Columbia dress in her patriotic and armored looks, who was leading the way of United States.
The initial logo of Columbia Pictures had a roman soldier woman with a shield and stick in her hand. Later inspired from Lady Columbia, the torch lady with head-dress on her forehead and a flickering torch light was made.
In the later versions of the logo, the head-dress and flickers were removed. And finally the logo that we see nowadays was created by Michael J Deas, who matte painted the entire logo.
The lady in this painting was Jenny Joseph.
The logo of Columbia Pictures has not much changed since then, only with few CGI corrections and enhancements that have been made.
2. MGM
Metro Goldwyn Mayer was built by joining together three different picture studios in US. Marcus Loew, a successful entrepreneur in US, bought Metro Pictures Corporation and Goldwyn Pictures. He also bought Louis B. Mayer Pictures, together forming his company Metro Goldwyn Mayer
Marcus Loew
Video Recording Lion for MGM Logo
The logo was designed by Howard Dietz which had a roaring lion, and was actually shot from real lions and not fake one. There are two stories famous behind Howard, using a lion in the logo for MGM, the first story explains his tribute to his Alma matter Columbia University’s athletic team which was nicknamed ‘The Lions’. The second story believes that Howard took Lions from the name of Marcus Loew, whose German surname translates to lion. The logo casted many lions for different versions of its logo.
MGM with Slats 
MGM with Jackie
MGM casted a lion named Slats for its very first logo for the introductory titles. After a while, a new logo with lion Jackie was introduced, in this logo, the lion was made to roar for the first time when the logo appeared. Then, several other lions were casted in, amongst which was Telly – the one who was most used for the colored versions, followed by Coffee, then Tanner, and George the last lion, before finally settling down to Leo, the current lion that we see in all of the MGM logos.
MGM with Telly 
MGM with Coffee 
MGM with Tanner 
MGM with George 
MGM with Leo
The logo went through subtle changes in long run, but Leo has been kept as part of the logo ever since.
Also, you might get to see some pictures which says that the lions were harmed during shooting for the logo of MGM. These are all fake photos trying to fool and misguide the people around. No animals, I mean lions were actually harmed ever, while shooting for the logo.
1. Disney
Disney was started by two brothers Walt and Roy Disney. The Walt Disney Company became the biggest and most famous animation and film production studio in the Hollywood and worldwide. It’s known for some of its amazing movie productions such as Jungle Book, Cinderella, Mickey Mouse and many more.
Disney become one the most powerful animation studios in world after acquiring Pixar for 7.4 billion US dollars, Pixar deeply involved Steve Jobs for quite a long period of time, in which he made Toy Story, one of the most popular animation movies ever.
Disney is widely known for using the signatures of Walt Disney for the introductory titles of the movies as Walt Disney wanted to give a personal touch to all of his movies. So, all the movies until the late 80s had a wide variety of different signatures of Walt Disney on the movie titles. All the signatures were different from each other as Walt Disney constantly kept changing his signatures to achieve a perfect signature for himself.
It was in the late 80s when Disney first released its logo with a blue background which had a castle from the movie Cinderella above which it had the text – Walt Disney Pictures.
The castle in the logo was inspired from the Neuschwanstein castle or the new Swanstone Castle from the 19th Century Romanesque, the village in southwest Bavaria, Germany.
The logo of Disney went through a complete 3D transformation after the acquisition of Pixar, in which the camera zoomed out of the castle, with flags on the castle now moving, and Walt Disney Pictures appears in a 3D style font.
After the text, a star would appear and draw a line at the back of the castle. But did you noticed something weird with the text in the logo. The loopy D that is sometimes hard to figure out. The loopy D in Disney is suspected to be taken from this Signature of Walt Disney.
Nowhere actually Walt Disney used this loopy D to do his signature, but this is the closest match that could be found that consists most parts of the Disney logo matching with the signature. Even though that big bold loopy D is not clearly readable, it must be the designer’s choice to make that big loopy D as a signature mark for the entire company that is now used for Disney Channel, Disney Studios, and Disney World.
And the current introductory title of the Disney movies are using CGI animations.
Starting from the clouds and following the fireworks, the castle with a more realistic view is displayed on the banks of a river, and finally only the text Disney with that big loopy D appears.