Cinema Shares

Cinema Shares International Distribution Corporation Type Film distributor Status Defunct (dissolved) Defunct 1986 Head- quarters United States

Cinema Shares International Distribution Corporation was an American film distributor who imported three consecutive entries in the Showa Godzilla series. It edited all three films for swearing, violence, and/or nudity in order to receive G ratings from the MPAA. It even published a short comic to promote its release of Godzilla vs. Megalon in 1976. The company folded in 1986.

Selected releases

• Godzilla vs. Megalon (1976)
• Godzilla vs. the Cosmic Monster (1977)
• Godzilla on Monster Island (1977)
• Space Warriors 2000 (TV 1985)

Selected publications

• Godzilla vs. Megalon (1976)

Trivia

• Cinema Shares initially released Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla as Godzilla vs. the Bionic Monster, simply written as Godzilla vs. Bionic Monster on posters. In July 1977, Universal Studios threatened a lawsuit against the distributor, claiming that the title was too similar to their TV series The Six Million Dollar Man and its spin-off The Bionic Woman. Cinema Shares then re-titled the film Godzilla vs. the Cosmic Monster, again simply written as Godzilla vs. Cosmic Monster on posters.
• Cinema Shares' titles for Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla and Godzilla vs. Gigan have been used for those films long after the company's dissolution. Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla aired on the Sci-Fi Channel beginning in 1994 under the title Godzilla vs. the Cosmic Monster, while Kraken Releasing released Godzilla vs. Gigan to DVD and Blu-ray in 2014 with the title "Godzilla on Monster Island!" included on the box art. Despite the use of these titles, both versions of these films were actually the English-dubbed international versions provided by Toho rather than Cinema Shares' edited theatrical versions.
• At one time, Cinema Shares released all three of its Godzilla films to theaters as a triple feature.
• Cinema Shares' poster for Godzilla vs. Megalon features Godzilla and Megalon battling atop the World Trade Center, despite no scenes in the entire film taking place in New York City. This was likely done to capitalize on the impending release of Dino De Laurentiis' big-budget King Kong remake that same year, the primary poster for which depicted Kong straddling the Twin Towers.

External links

• Toho Kingdom thread on Cinema Shares

References

This is a list of references for Cinema Shares. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: ^[1]

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