In 1983, the company was established by Donald Kushner and Peter Locke, the former of which was a producer on the movie Tron, and the latter was a sales agent, and member of the Channing/Debin/Locke Company (which he co-founded with Stockard Channing and David Debin). In January 1987, it sold a minority interest to Atlantic Entertainment Group thus renaming it Atlantic/Kushner-Locke. That year, in 1987, it attempted to merge with television syndicator All American Television to form a single company that paid $36 million in a single transaction in order to establish it as a public company without an effort of an underwriting of an initial public offering, but the merger talks between Atlantic/Kushner-Locke and All American Television was never realized. Atlantic sold back its share in July 1988 and the company reverted to its original name.
