This one may not seem too surprising given that Richard Branson has so many limbs in honey pots you can bet he wishes he had three hands. Its now the norm for TV providers to become involved with films in some form, with some of the bigger names actually getting behind very large productions (BBC Films, Film 4). But Branson, the extreme entrepreneur he is, was at it long before anyone else. In the eighties he spearheaded a short lived film production enterprise, Virgin Films. Starting out as a distributor, it quickly moved into production. Whats odd about Virgin is that even though it had less than ten films to its name, there was actually some high quality stuff produced, with the brilliant John Hurt starring adaptation of Orwells 1984 being the standout. After one massive flop however, the sub-company was shut down. The company makes the list because it was very different for the time; nowadays its to be expected of big multimedia corporations to be involved in film in some capacity. Recently, Virgin Produced has been set up, producing more middling mainstream fare; Limitless, Immortals and Machine Gun Preacher all came from this new studio.