Sunset Productions, Inc. was a television production and licensing subsidiary of Warner Bros. Pictures headed by Jack M. Warner. It was an entity separate from Warner Bros. Television.

History

Sunset was originally established as a subsidiary of

Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (WBEI), commonly known as Warner Bros. (WB), is an American filmed entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California and the main namesake subsidiary of Warner Bro ...

that focused on television. Its first production was a series of half-hour shows. On February 12, 1955, Warner Bros. sold the TV distribution rights to 191 of their

black-and-white Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white to produce a range of achromatic brightnesses of grey. It is also known as greyscale in technical settings. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, ...

cartoons to Guild Films through Sunset. The cartoons part of the deal were all black-and-white ''

Looney Tunes ''Looney Tunes'' is an American media franchise produced and distributed by Warner Bros. The franchise began as a series of animated short films that originally ran from 1930 to 1969, alongside its spin-off series ''Merrie Melodies'', during t ...

'' shorts and all black-and-white non-

Harman-Ising Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising were an American animation team and company known for founding the Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation studios. In 1929, the studio was founded under the name Harman-Ising Productions, producing ''Looney T ...

Merrie Melodies ''Merrie Melodies'' is an American animated comedy short film series distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. It was part of the ''Looney Tunes'' franchise and featured many of the same characters. Originally running from August 2, 1931, to Septem ...

'' shorts. All references to Warner Bros. in the cartoons were removed because Warner did not want to antagonize theater owners as a result of their television deals. Guild Films would hold onto the TV distribution rights to the cartoons until its bankruptcy on March 6, 1961, after which the TV rights to the 191 cartoons would be acquired by

Seven Arts Productions Seven Arts Productions was a production company which made films for release by other studios. It was founded in 1957 by Eliot Hyman, Ray Stark, and Norman Katz. Formation The company was formed in 1957. It came out of the company, Associa ...

. Sunset eventually began to produce TV commercials. In April 1957, Sunset Productions changed its name to Warner Bros. TV Commercial and Industrial Films. Jack M. Warner would continue to run the subsidiary.

References

{{Warner Bros. Warner Bros. divisions Looney Tunes