In 1983, Dino De Laurentiis produced
Universal Pictures'
Firestarter in Wilmington, North Carolina. The
governor of North Carolina,
Jim Hunt, claimed that the filming increased economic activity in the state. Hunt used incentives and loans to allow De Laurentiis to buy a local warehouse to convert into a studio. In early 1984, De Laurentiis founded the North Carolina Film Corporation, with
Martha Schumacher as president. In 1985, DEG acquired
Embassy Pictures from
The Coca-Cola Company, allowing for North American distribution of De Laurentiis' new product. Dino De Laurentiis continued to pre-sell his films for overseas distribution, as he had done in the past. In May 1986, De Laurentiis took DEG public, raising $240 million in the process. The following month, DEG's first slate of films were released. In 1986, De Laurentiis formed an Australian subsidiary, De Laurentiis Entertainment Limited (DEL), which built a studio on the
Gold Coast. Later that year, DEG also financed another syndicated strip with Silverman and Farr to set up
California Girls, with Viacom Enterprises serving as distributor of the series. Canadian distribution of DEG releases were done by
Paramount Pictures through its
Famous Players division. In May 1986, rival
Cineplex Odeon Corporation unsuccessfully attempted to sue Paramount for breaching a pre-set Canadian distribution contract DEG had with the chain's
Pan-Canadian Films division. By August 1987, DEG was $16.5 million in debt, citing the box-office failures and/or disappointments of its product. Dino De Laurentiis refused offers to sell the company because he wanted to retain
controlling interest. Around the same time, De Laurentiis' daughter Raffaella exited her role as DEG's president of production. That same year, DEG's Gold Coast studio would be acquired by
Village Roadshow, whose intended strategy became the basis for Village Roadshow's
Silver Series line, and some of the workforce joined the newly-formed
Village Roadshow Pictures. A year later, in April 1989, the studio in Wilmington would be sold to
Mario Kassar and
Andrew G. Vajna's
Carolco Pictures. Carolco would also take on production of
Total Recall, a film DEG had an early version of in pre-production with
Patrick Swayze as Quaid and
Bruce Beresford as director (
David Cronenberg had also been approached), where it was to have been shot in Australia. The same year DEG's Wilmington studio was sold to Carolco, its library, along with the
Embassy Pictures library that DEG acquired, was sold to Paravision International, then a subsidiary of
L'Oréal which also held the
Filmation library at the time. The Paravision library excluding Filmation was later sold to
Canal+ in 1994. As a result, the DEG library is currently held by
StudioCanal; with some exceptions. ==Films released==