It was one of the largest mini-major studios during its early years, when it worked with prominent directors such as Woody Allen, James Cameron, Jonathan Demme, and Oliver Stone.

[3] Four films distributed by Orion won Academy Awards for Best Picture: Amadeus (1984), Platoon (1986), Dances with Wolves (1990), and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

[5] The last straw came for Pleskow when he refused to collect and deliver the medical records of UA department heads to Transamerica's offices in San Francisco for the sake of confidentiality.

The tensions only worsened when Fortune magazine reported an article on the clash between UA and TA in which Beckett had stated that, if the executives disliked the parent company's treatment of them, they should resign.

[5] Krim, Benjamin and Pleskow quit United Artists on January 13, 1978, followed by the exits of senior vice presidents William Bernstein and Mike Medavoy three days later.

The week following the resignations, according to the website Reference for Business, 63 important Hollywood figures took out an advertisement in a trade paper warning Transamerica that it had made a fatal mistake in letting the five men leave.

[7] In February 1978, the five men forged a deal with Warner Bros.[8] The executives formed Orion Pictures Company, named after the constellation which they claimed had five main stars (it actually has seven or eight).

The new company intended only to finance projects, giving the filmmakers complete creative autonomy; this ideal had been successfully implemented at United Artists.

Contracts with actress and director Barbra Streisand; actors James Caan, Jane Fonda, Peter Sellers, Jon Voight, and Burt Reynolds; directors Francis Ford Coppola and Blake Edwards; writer/director John Milius; singer Peter Frampton; and producer Ray Stark soon materialized.

Other films released by Orion over the next two years included a few successes such as Caddyshack (1980) and Arthur (1981); critically praised but underperforming films such as The Great Santini (1979), an adaptation of a Pat Conroy novel, and Sidney Lumet's Prince of the City (1981); and pictures by young writer-directors such as Philip Kaufman's The Wanderers (1979) and Nicholas Meyer's debut Time After Time (1979); plus Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) which Orion only distributed in the United States.

[16][17] Out of the initial 18 films released by the firm under the name of Orion Pictures Corporation, ten made profits, five just managed to cover their costs, and three suffered losses under $2 million.

[6] One such film, Francis Ford Coppola's The Cotton Club, was mired in legal troubles and Orion lost $3 million of its investment.

All but two films, Desperately Seeking Susan and Code of Silence, made less than $10 million at the United States box office, including an unsuccessful attempt at a James Bond-type franchise, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins.

Furthermore, the production of the Rodney Dangerfield comedy Back to School was put on hold when a co-producer died, taking the film off of its Christmas 1985 release slate.

[6] On May 22, 1986, a 6.5% stake in Orion was purchased by Metromedia, a television and communications company controlled by billionaire (and a friend of Krim's) John Kluge.

[6] By March 1987, the studio's fortunes had increased dramatically with a succession of critical and commercial hits, including Platoon (which ultimately won a Best Picture Oscar), Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters, and the sports film Hoosiers.

[22] In January 1987, Kluge faced competition with the arrival of Sumner Redstone, whose theater chain, National Amusements, purchased 6.42 percent of Orion's stock.

"[6] In 1989, Orion suffered from a disastrous slate of films, placing dead last among larger Hollywood studios by box office revenue.

Among its biggest flops that year were Great Balls of Fire!, a biography of Jerry Lee Lewis starring Dennis Quaid and Winona Ryder; She-Devil, a dark comedy starring Meryl Streep and Roseanne Barr; Speed Zone, an action-comedy vehicle for SCTV alumni John Candy, Joe Flaherty, and Eugene Levy; and Miloš Forman's adaptation of Les Liaisons dangereuses, Valmont, which competed with Dangerous Liaisons, also based on the same source material.

Test screenings of the "Weird Al" Yankovic comedy UHF were so strong that Orion had high expectations for it, but it flopped at the box office (though it later developed a cult following on video).

The only bright spot was Kevin Costner's western epic Dances with Wolves, which won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture,[29] and grossed $400 million worldwide.

Its reorganization plan would allow for Orion to continue producing and releasing films, but financing for the features would be provided by outside sources, with the studio purchasing the distribution rights to them after their completion.

[44][45] Orion's bankruptcy also delayed the release of many films the studio had produced or acquired, among them: Love Field (1992), RoboCop 3 (1993), The Dark Half (1993), Blue Sky (1994), Car 54, Where Are You?

[46] In November 1995, Orion, two other companies controlled by Kluge, and film and TV house MCEG Sterling (producer of the Look Who's Talking series) were merged to form the Metromedia International Group.

In 1996, Metromedia acquired production company Motion Picture Corporation of America, and installed its heads, Brad Krevoy and Steve Stabler, as co-presidents of Orion.

Under his leadership, the "new" Orion will produce, market and distribute four to six modestly budgeted films a year across genres and platforms, and both wide and limited releases for targeted audiences.

[66] On February 5, 2019, MGM and Annapurna Pictures expanded their US joint distribution venture Mirror, rebranding it as United Artists Releasing.

On August 20, 2020, it was announced that Orion would be relaunched again, with its focus shifting to films made by underrepresented filmmakers (including people of color, women, the LGBT community and people with disabilities) as part of the efforts to increase inclusivity in the film industry, both in front of and behind the camera, with the hiring of Alana Mayo as the president, replacing Hegeman by October.

Most ancillary rights to Orion's back catalog from the 1978–1982 joint venture period remain with Warner Bros., including such films as 10 (1979), Caddyshack (1980), Arthur (1981), Excalibur (1981), and Prince of the City (1981).

Orion also retains a controlling interest in The Cotton Club, although major rights are now with Lionsgate, which owns the library of presenting studio Zoetrope Corporation.