It was founded in 1982 as a joint venture between
Columbia Pictures and the French company
Gaumont to distribute foreign films in the US. In 1984, Marcie Bloom, who was formerly of the New York Film Festival, joined Triumph Films to serve as New York publicity director (Bloom would later co-found
Sony Pictures Classics). In 1985, Triumph Films announced that they would cut back down on their production slate, focusing on foreign-language films with English subtitles. Shortly afterwards, Gaumont decided to cut ties, and Columbia Pictures, now the sole owner, decided to shutter Triumph Films, and fold it into the Columbia Pictures label. The arthouse functions were later taken by
Sony Pictures Classics in 1992. On January 5, 1988, the then-newly founded
Columbia Pictures Entertainment announced that they would revive the Triumph brand as a new worldwide subsidiary, Triumph Releasing Corporation; this incarnation of Triumph provided administrative services related to the distribution of
Columbia Pictures and
Tri-Star Pictures in the U.S. and Canada, while internationally, Triumph would be responsible for the sales, marketing and distribution of Columbia and Tri-Star films under the direction of each individual studio. It was officially incorporated on March 24, 1988. In 1989, Triumph began to distribute films from
Crédit Lyonnais's
Epic Productions Inc. under a theatrical distribution agreement. The company also started distributing films from
21st Century Film Corporation and
SVS Films (owned by Sony) around the time, the latter after Sony acquired
Columbia Pictures Entertainment. In 1991, when SVS was reorganized, SVS Films was absorbed as the production branch of Triumph Releasing Corporation, while the home video unit of SVS was reorganized as SVS/Triumph before the home video unit shuttered. In March 1992, David Saunders, who was business partner with
Zalman King, and former president of The Guber-Peters Entertainment Company, became president of Triumph Releasing Corporation, which transferred from distributing films by
Epic Productions and
Vision International to focus itself on low-budget productions. In 1994, the company entered into a pact with
Crystal Sky Pictures for production of two low-budget family feature films. On November 23, 1994, Triumph Releasing Corporation was renamed as Sony Pictures Releasing Corporation, The role as a genre label would later been taken by
Screen Gems. After being shut down in 1997, the Triumph Films label was re-activated in 2003. The label went dormant again in 2008, becoming an in-name-only division of Sony Pictures Releasing Corporation. In 2014, the label was revived yet again for the release of
The Remaining. Their direct-to-video role has been taken by
Destination Films within Sony. ==Notable films==