Summit Entertainment

Summit was originally founded in the early 1990s and officially launched in 1999 by Patrick Wachsberger, Bob Hayward and David Garrett under the name Summit Entertainment LP as a production, distribution, and sales organization. In 2006, it became a fully independent film studio, Summit Entertainment, with the addition of Rob Friedman, a former executive at Paramount Pictures. The new company added major development, production, acquisitions, marketing and distribution branches with a financing deal led by Merrill Lynch and other investors giving it access to over $1 billion in financing.

After a string of flops including P2, Penelope, Never Back Down and Sex Drive, Summit finally found success in November 2008 with the release of Twilight, a teen romance about vampires based on the best-selling book of the same name by Stephenie Meyer that made $408,773,703 worldwide. In the spring of 2009, Summit released Knowing, the company's second movie to open #1 at the box office and made $182,492,056 worldwide. Recent films for Summit include Next Day Air ($10,027,047), The Hurt Locker ($15,218,783 worldwide), an action-thriller war-themed film directed by Kathryn Bigelow (which ended up becoming Summit's first Oscar-winning Best Picture), the animated film Astro Boy, the teenage horror Sorority Row ($14,826,298 worldwide), and 2009's New Moon ($295,114,155 in the US alone).

In 2008, Summit ranked 8th place among the studios, with a gross of $226.5 million, almost entirely because of the release of Twilight.In 2009, Summit ranked 7th among studios with a gross of $482.5 million