Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., also referred to as Columbia Pictures, is an American film production and distribution company. It is the flagship unit of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is one of the major film studios and a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony Group Corporation. Columbia Pictures is one of the leading film studios in the world, and was one of the so-called "Little Three" among the eight major film studios of Hollywood's "Golden Age".