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EMKA Ltd.

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EMKA Ltd.
Founded 1957
President
Notable Works None of its own; holds the copyright for the pre-1950 Paramount Pictures library
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EMKA Ltd. is an in-name-only division of NBCUniversal.

EMKA was formed in 1957 by one of NBCUniversal's predecessors, MCA (Music Corporation of America), to serve as a holding company through which MCA could distribute 750 feature films produced or released by Paramount Pictures between 1928 and December 1, 1949 (which the company had acquired from Paramount following the 1948 United States Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Paramount Pictures Inc.), as well as some movies produced by Alfred Hitchcock which had originally been released by Paramount, on television. An exception to this are the pre-1950 theatrical cartoons produced by Paramount's Famous Studios animation division; in 1955, most of Famous' output was sold to U.M. & M. TV Corporation (and its later successor company National Telefilm Associates), while its Popeye shorts were purchased by Associated Artists Productions (which was later absorbed into United Artists Television) and its Superman shorts went to Motion Pictures for Television.

MCA formed EMKA as a means to avoid problems with the anti-trust laws in place in the US at the time. When MCA was dissolved in 1996 by then-owner Seagram Company and folded into Universal Studios (which MCA had acquired in 1962 as part of its purchase of Universal's then-parent company, the American branch of Decca Records), Universal became the owner of EMKA's Paramount catalogue. Those movies handled through EMKA are currently distributed on TV by NBCUniversal Syndication Studios, and on DVD and Blu-ray by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.

EMKA stands for the phonetic pronunciation of original parent company MCA as a word instead of as an acronym.