[1] The day after the contracts expired, the trio placed ads for the newly named "Ladd Company" in The Hollywood Reporter and Variety.

[2] Under Warner Bros., The Ladd Company distributed Chariots of Fire, which won the 1981 Academy Award for Best Picture.

On April 18, 1984, Alan Ladd Jr. and Warner Bros. parted ways, even though the former still had three years left on the studio's contract.

The Ladd Company's co-founder Gareth Wigan died at his home in Los Angeles on February 13, 2010, at the age of 78.

[7][8] The Ladd Company's co-founder Jay Kanter died at his home in Beverly Hills, California, on August 6, 2024, at the age of 97.

[9] Alan Ladd Jr. had been a successful studio head of 20th Century Fox, helping make films such as Star Wars,[10] Julia, Alien, The Turning Point, Young Frankenstein, An Unmarried Woman and Silver Streak.

[13] They signed a deal with Warner Bros who would finance and distribute their films, although the Ladd Company had creative control.

"[14] On November 2, 1979, Ladd announced the company's first films: a Bette Midler concert movie (Ladd greenlit Midler's The Rose while at Fox) and Madonna Red a $10 million Joseph L. Mankiewicz film starring Paul Newman as a Vietnam War veteran turned priest.

[15] Then they announced Five Days in Summer from Fred Zinnemann who had made Julia, and Twice Upon a Time a $3 million film from Lucasfilm.

The company helped make Blade Runner (1982), directed by Ridley Scott, which was a cult classic years after its theatrical release, but under performed critically and commercially.

However the company made a series of flops: Love Child (1982), Five Days One Summer (1982), Lovesick (1983) and Twice Upon a Time (1983).

[25] Less successful were Purple Hearts (1984) and Once Upon a Time in America (1984) which the company extensively edited without the cooperation of Sergio Leone.