The Cannon Group, Inc. was an American group of companies, including Cannon Films, which produced films from 1967 to 1994. The extensive group also owned, amongst others, a large international cinema chain and a video film company that invested heavily in the video market, buying the international video rights to several classic film libraries. Some of their best known films include Joe (1970), Runaway Train (1985) and Street Smart (1987), all of which were Oscar-nominated. History 1967–1979: Beginnings Cannon Films was incorporated on October 23, 1967. It was formed by Dennis Friedland and Chris Dewey while they were in their early 20s. They had immediate success producing English-language versions of Swedish soft porn films directed by Joseph W. Sarno: Inga (1968), aka Jag––en oskuld and To Ingrid, My Love, Lisa (1968), aka Kvinnolek. By 1970, they had produced films on a larger production scale than a lot of major distributors, such as Joe, starring Peter Boyle. They managed this by tightly limiting their budgets to $300,000 per picture—or less, in some cases. The success of Joe brought more attention to the company. However, as the 1970s moved on, a string of unsuccessful films seriously drained Cannon's capital. This, along with changes to film-production tax laws, led to a drop in Cannon's stock price. 1979–1985: Golan-Globus era By 1979, Cannon had hit serious financial difficulties, and Friedland and Dewey sold Cannon to Israeli cousins Menahem Golan (who had directed The Apple) and Yoram Globus for $500,000. The two cousins forged a business model of buying bottom-barrel scripts and putting them into production. They produced such films in a variety of genres, although their biggest successes were with action films; they tapped into a ravenous market for B movies in the 1980s. After buying the rights to the 1974 film Death Wish, Cannon produced three sequels to it in the 1980s, all starring Charles Bronson. Despite negative reviews, these films were financially successful, especially Death Wish II (1982), which earned over $40 million on an $8 million budget. Other major hits for Cannon were a series of action movies starring Chuck Norris, including Missing in Action (1984), Invasion U.S.A. (1985) and The Delta Force (1986). Missing in Action was criticized heavily as being a preemptive cash-in on the Rambo franchise. James Cameron's story treatment for Rambo: First Blood Part II was floating around Hollywood in 1983, which Golan and Globus reviewed and