The story
Beginnings in late 1970s
In 1976, Frank Agrama began selling broadcast rights from Paramount Pictures to his friend, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Mediaset media company. In the late 1970s, Agrama, while in a trade fair in Cannes, France, met Hong Kong entrepreneurs Paddy Chan Mei-yiu and Katherine Hsu May-chun. The three agreed to form a collaboration to trade movie rights internationally. Chan set up Hong Kong–based company Harmony Gold Limited in 1979, while Agrama set up Agrama Film Enterprises on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.
In 1983, Agrama founded Harmony Gold USA. He later also became the Los Angeles commercial representative of another of Chan's companies, Wiltshire Trading.
Shaka Zulu (1983–1986)
In late 1983, Agrama negotiated a deal with the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) to distribute the controversial Shaka Zulu miniseries in spite of the economic sanctions at the time. The planned 10-episode miniseries was based on the story of the king of the Zulu, Shaka (reigned 1816 to 1828), and the writings of the British traders with whom he interacted.
Throughout 1984 and 1985, the original budget of about $1.75 million escalated quickly to $12 million, and the SABC justified the outlay to anticipated returns to be earned on the international market. Frank Agrama, however, noted the production was a "calculated gamble." Shaka Zulu had in fact, become the most expensive miniseries ever produced for television syndicate in the United States without pre-commitment to network or operation time to date. To ensure its marketability, Harmony Gold demanded that the well known white 'stars' appeared in the first episode to satisfy US advertisers, contrary to original script. The SABC's involvement was also completely removed for its international release due to legal implications set by apartheid. The opening credits featured Harmony Gold, with Frank Agrama listed as associate producer.
Shaka Zulu went on to become a massive success worldwide, and has developed a cult following since its premiere in 1986. It has been the most repeatedly screened miniseries ever shown on syndicated television in the United States. By 1992, it had been seen by over 350 million viewers. The series dislodged John Marshall's The Hunters and the later The Gods Must be Crazy film series as the prime shaper of American perceptions of 'tribal' history in Southern Africa. Despite its success, the SABC failed to recoup the cost of their production due to unfair terms negotiated by Harmony Gold during production.
Robotech (1985)
In the mid-1980s, Harmony Gold hired Carl Macek to adapt Japanese animated programming for American broadcast release. Macek originally wanted to adapt The Super Dimension Fortress Macross only, but was instead forced to combine it with two other anime series together, even though they had no relation to Macross. These three series combined became Robotech. The other two series used are:
Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross
Genesis Climber MOSPEADA
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Harmony Gold's cited reasoning for combining these unrelated series was its decision to market Macross for American weekday syndication television, which required a minimum of 65 episodes at the time (thirteen weeks at five episodes per week). Macross and the two other series each had fewer episodes than required, since they originally aired in Japan as weekly series. The production was successful enough to merit an American produced movie and a spin-off, Robotech II: The Sentinels. Due to unforeseen economic circumstances, production was cancelled.
Late 1980s to early 2000s
In 1987, Harmony Gold USA signed a deal to distribute international feature films for syndication, which was dubbed by Harmony Gold themselves, and the skein comprises itself of the 25 90-minute films in the Série Noire collection of films that were produced by Hamster Films of Paris, and Harmony Gold had to take the Série Noire films to the U.S. and other English-language markets for the viewing area. That year, Harmony Gold USA collaborated with international backers, including Société Française de Productions and Reteeurope, both of the respective French, Italian and Spanish interests to set up a new project, and what the worldwide market represented to set up the Harmony Premiere Network, which was to be the next Operation Prime Time, and brings together U.S. and international financers to co-produce the products for Harmony Gold.
In 1987, the company had teamed up with Italian company Silvio Berlusconi Communications to pay $150 million for a pact, to turn out 100 hours of television programming, and partnering will be dubbed by America 5 Enterprises, which will produce miniseries, TV series and telefilms using U.S. and international talent, and the two companies will share equally in costs and profits, and the company would handle worldwide and domestic television rights, with the exception of Europe, where distribution of the company will be handled through Berlusconi arm Reteitalia.
In 1988, after the cancellation of Robotech II: The Sentinels, a number of the staff were recruited to work at Saban Entertainment. Carl Macek, along with his friend Jerry Beck went on to found Streamline Pictures. Meanwhile, Harmony Gold began moving away from production and began focusing more on film distribution, dot-com ventures and real estate.
In 1998, Harmony Gold came under some scrutiny by several media executives for their role as a 'middleman' selling Paramount Pictures distribution rights to Mediaset.
From 1999 to the early 2000s, the company began reverting to film production once again. They partnered with Netter Digital and hired Carl Macek to write Robotech 3000, which would have been an American produced spinoff of the original series. A promotional trailer was screened at the 2000 FanimeCon anime convention, and was widely panned by fans. Tatsunoko Productions attempted to salvage the project, to no avail.
In 2000, the company produced Abe & Bruno, a family film about a gorilla on the run directed by Henri Charr.
2000s and beyond
Harmony Gold began heavily pushing Robotech, first by releasing the series via a partnership with ADV Films in the US, and Manga Entertainment in the UK. In 2006, they partnered with FUNimation Entertainment to release the American produced Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles on home video.
In August 2014, Harmony Gold released their first direct-to-video live-action feature in over a decade, The Big Goofy Secret of Hidden Pines. Directed by Henri Charr, the film revolves around the comedic antics of two vacationers after they stumble upon Bigfoot.
From Wikipedia’s article on Harmony Gold USA, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4