ITC Entertainment

ITP put most of the production budget into producing one show, The Adventures of Robin Hood (ITV, 1955–59).

ITC is best known for being the company behind many successful British cult TV filmed series during the 1960s and 1970s, such as The Saint, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), Danger Man, The Baron, Gideon's Way, The Champions, The Prisoner, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Stingray, Joe 90, Interpol Calling, Man in a Suitcase, Strange Report, Department S, The Persuaders!, Jason King, The Adventurer, The Protectors, Space 1999, and Return of the Saint.

Some ATV videotaped productions, usually recorded at ATV Elstree Studios, were produced as 'international productions' and distributed overseas with ITC branding - these included The Muppet Show, Brian Clemens' Thriller and The Julie Andrews Hour, the latter of which was taped at ABC-TV studios in Hollywood.

ITC got its start as a production company when former American producer Hannah Weinstein approached Lew Grade.

Weinstein proposed making the series for ITV and simultaneously marketing it in the United States through an American TV distribution company, Official Films.

In 1963 Gerry Anderson's Anderson-Provis (AP) Films became part of ACC and produced Fireball XL-5, the hugely successful children's series Thunderbirds and, under its successor company Century 21 Television/Cinema Productions, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.

ITC also funded Anderson-created programmes aimed at the adult market, including UFO and Space: 1999.

Another ITC children's series was The Adventures of Rupert Bear, the first television outing for the Daily Express cartoon character.

ITC (in partnership with the Italian company RAI) was also behind Franco Zeffirelli's Biblical mini-series Jesus of Nazareth, Moses the Lawgiver, and the Gregory Peck television film The Scarlet and the Black.

[9][10] In 1990, ITC placed Marble Arch up for sale amid financial losses; it was ultimately sold to Interscope Communications, a film and television production company who assumed Marble Arch's former duties in exchange for ITC's handling of distribution and co-financing of Interscope projects.

In the summer of 1980, two films released by AFD within six weeks of each other helped lead to the distribution company's dissolution.

met with pre-release criticism from the novel's author, Clive Cussler, and recouped only a fraction of its costs; Grade himself retired from active film production, commenting that it would have been cheaper to "lower the Atlantic.

After the films' failures, ITC and EMI agreed to sell AFD and the distribution rights to its library to Universal Pictures, though the AFD films which were then in post production at the time were still ultimately released by AFD, to handle the release of the remaining pictures still in production at the time of the sale, beginning with The Legend of the Lone Ranger, and including On Golden Pond, Sophie's Choice, The Dark Crystal, and The Great Muppet Caper.

the various copyrights have reverted to their respective owners, but Universal still maintains theatrical rights to most of the ITC and EMI films initially released by AFD.

[17][18][19] The final blow came in the summer of 1982, when majority control of ACC was sold to Australian financier Robert Holmes à Court.

TV production at ITC would not resume until the company forged a deal with producer David Gerber in 1993.

[42][43] As for ITC's television output, Carlton (and later Granada and now ITV) released some of these shows on DVD both in Europe and North America.

ITC productions and distributions crossed many different genres – from historical adventure, to spy-fi and action, and later into both children's and adult science-fiction – as well as films covering many different subjects.