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A movie studio (aka film studio or simply studio) is a term used to describe a major Entertainment Company or Motion Picture Company that has its own privately owned studio facility or facilities that are used to film movies, which is handled by the production company. The majority of companies in the entertainment industry have never owned their own studios, but have rented space from other companies.

There are also independently owned studio facilities, who have never produced a motion picture of their own because they are not Entertainment companies or Motion Picture companies; they are companies who sell only studio space.

Beginnings[link]

In 1893, Thomas Edison built the first movie studio in the United States when he constructed the Black Maria, a tarpaper-covered structure near his laboratories in West Orange, New Jersey, and asked circus, vaudeville, and dramatic actors to perform for the camera. He distributed these movies at vaudeville theaters, penny arcades, wax museums, and fairgrounds. Other studio operations followed in New Jersey, New York City, and Chicago.

In the early 1900s, companies started moving to Los Angeles, California. Although electric lights were by then widely available, none were yet powerful enough to adequately expose film; the best source of illumination for motion picture production was natural sunlight. Some movies were shot on the roofs of buildings in Downtown Los Angeles. Early movie producers also relocated to Southern California to escape Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company, which controlled almost all the patents relevant to movie production at the time.

The first movie studio in the Hollywood area was Nestor Studios, opened in 1911 by Al Christie for David Horsley. In the same year, another 15 independents settled in Hollywood. Other production companies eventually settled in the Los Angeles area in places such as Culver City, Burbank, and what would soon become known as Studio City in the San Fernando Valley.

The "majors"[link]

The Big 5
By the mid-1920s, the evolution of a handful of American production companies into wealthy motion picture industry conglomerates that owned their own studios, distribution divisions, and theaters, and contracted with performers and other filmmaking personnel, led to the sometimes confusing equation of "studio" with "production company" in industry slang. Five large companies, 20th Century Fox, RKO Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer came to be known as the "Big Five," the "majors," or "the Studios" in trade publications such as Variety, and their management structures and practices collectively came to be known as the "studio system."

The Little 3
Although they owned few or no theaters to guarantee sales of their films, Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures, and United Artists also fell under these rubrics, making a total of eight generally recognized "major studios". United Artists, although its controlling partners owned not one but two production studios during the Golden Age, had an often-tenuous hold on the title of "major" and operated mainly as a backer and distributor of independently produced films.

The minors[link]

Smaller studios operated simultaneously with "the majors." These included operations such as Republic Pictures, active from 1935, which produced films that occasionally matched the scale and ambition of the larger studio, and Monogram Pictures, which specialized in series and genre releases. Together with smaller outfits such as PRC TKO and Grand National, the minor studios filled the demand for B-movies and are sometimes collectively referred to as Poverty Row.

The independents[link]

The Big Five's ownership of movie theaters was eventually opposed by eight independent producers, including Samuel Goldwyn, David O. Selznick, Walt Disney, Hal Roach, and Walter Wanger. In 1948, the federal government won a case against Paramount in the Supreme Court, which ruled that the vertically integrated structure of the movie industry constituted an illegal monopoly. This decision, reached after twelve years of litigation, hastened the end of the studio system and Hollywood's "Golden Age".

Film to television[link]

Halfway through the 1950s, with television proving to be a lucrative enterprise not destined to disappear any time soon—as many in the film industry had once hoped—movie studios were increasingly being used to produce programming for the burgeoning medium. Some midsize film companies, such as Republic Pictures, eventually sold their studios to TV production concerns, which were eventually bought by larger studios, such as the American Broadcasting Company which was purchased by The Walt Disney Company in 1996.

Today[link]

With the growing diversification of studios into such fields as video games, television, theme parks, home video and publishing, they have become multi-national corporations. As the studios increased in size they began to rely on production companies, like J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot Productions, to handle many of the creative and physical production details of their feature films. Instead the studios transformed into financing and distribution entities for the films made by their affiliated production companies.

Due to rising real-estate and upkeep costs, as well as the decreasing cost of CG and visual effects, many studios sold large chunks of their once massive studio spaces or backlots to private real-estate developers. Century City in Los Angeles was once part of the 20th Century Fox backlot, which was amount the largest and most famous of the studio lots. In most cases portions of the backlots were retained and are available for rental by various film and television productions. Some studios offer tours of their backlots, while Universal Pictures allows visitors to its adjacent Universal Studios Hollywood theme park to take a tram tour of the backlot where films such as Psycho and Back to the Future were once shot.

Independent Film Movement and The Studios[link]

In the 1980s and 90s, as the cost of professional 16mm film equipment decreased, along with the emergence of non-film innovations such as S-VHS and Mini-DV cameras, many young filmmakers began to make films outside the "studio system". Filmmakers such as Kevin Smith, Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino and Richard Linklater made films that pushed boundaries in ways the studios were then reluctant to do. In response to these films, many distributed by "mini-studios" like Miramax, the "majors" created their own in-house mini-studios meant to focus on edgier "independent" content. Focus Features was created by Universal Pictures and Fox Searchlight was created by 20th Century Fox for this purpose.

Notable movie studios[link]

• 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment (USA)
• Amblin Entertainment (USA & UK)
• Anchor Bay Entertainment (USA)
• Artisan Entertainment (USA)
• AB Svensk Filmindustri (Sweden)
• Annapurna Studios (Hyderabad, India)
• Atlas Studios (Morocco)
• Ardmore Studios (Ireland)
• AVM Productions (Chennai, India)
• Studio Babelsberg (Germany)
• Barrandov Studios (Czech Republic)
• Bavaria Film (Germany)
• Bigfoot Entertainment (USA,Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong)
• Biograph Studios (USA)
• Blue Sky Studios (USA)
• The Bridge Studios (British Columbia, Canada)
• CBS Films (USA)
• CBS Fox Video (USA & UK)
• Christie Film Company (USA)
• Ciby 2000 (Canada, Norway, UK)
• Cinema City International (Hong Kong)
• Cinergi Pictures (USA)
• Columbia Pictures (USA)
• Columbia TriStar Home Video (USA)
• Crystal Sky Pictures (USA)
• Dimension Films (USA)
• Disneynature (France)
• DreamWorks (USA)
• Edison Studios (USA)
• Edison's Black Maria (USA)
• Elstree Studios (UK)
• Eros Entertainment(India)
• Famous Players Film Company (USA)
• Full Moon Features (USA)
• Fireworks Entertainment (USA & Cuba)
• Five & Two Pictures (USA)
• Focus Features (USA)
• Fox Searchlight Pictures (USA)
• Fox Star Studios (India)
• Fox Video (USA)
• Gaumont Film Company (France)
• Gener8Xion Entertainment (USA)
• Genius Products (USA, Australia & UK)
• Globo Filmes (Brazil)
• Goldwyn Pictures (USA)
• GoodTimes Entertainment (USA)
• Gorky Film Studio (Russia)
• Grassroots Films (USA)
• Guild Home Video (USA & UK)
• Hengdian World Studios (China)
• Highdef Films (USA)
• Hollywood Pictures (USA)
• Jim Henson Home Entertainment (USA & UK)
• Kadokawa Pictures (Japan)
• Kanteerava Studios (Bangalore, (India)
• Kalem Company (USA)
• KDK Factory (USA)
• Keystone Studios (USA)
• Korda Studios (Hungary)
• Legendary Pictures (USA)
• Lenfilm (Russia)
• Lions Gate Entertainment (US, UK & Canada)
• Lubin Studios (USA)
• Lucasfilm (USA)
• Marwah Films & Video Studios (New Delhi, India)
• MediaPro Pictures (Romania)
• Méliès Films (France)
• Media Asia Entertainment Group (Hong Kong)
• Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (USA)
• Mirabilis Motion Pictures (USA)
• Miramax Films (USA)
• Moldova-Film (Moldova)
• Mosfilm (Soviet Union [now Russia)
• Mutual Film (USA)
• National Film Board of Canada (Canada)
• Shanghai Film Group Corporation (China)
• Nerigan Entertainment (New Zealand & Russia)
• Nestor Studios (USA)
• New Line Cinema (USA)
• New World Pictures (USA Cuba & UK)
• Nordisk Film (Denmark)
• Nu Boyana Film (Bulgaria)
• Orion Pictures (USA)
• Open Road Films (USA)
• Overture Films (USA)
• Padmalaya Studios (Hyderabad, India)
• Paramount Pictures (USA)
• Pathé (France)
• Pantelion Films (USA)
• Pinewood Studios (UK)
• Pixar Studios (USA)
• Possibility Pictures (USA)
• Premium Picture Productions (USA)
• Pure Flix Entertainment (USA)
• Ramanaidu Studios (Hyderabad, India)
• Ramoji Film City (Hyderabad, (India)
• Republic Pictures (UK)
• Revolution Studios (USA)
• Russian World Studios (Russia)
• Screen Gems (UK)
• Se-ma-for (Poland)
• Selig Polyscope Company (USA)
• Shaw Brothers Studio (Hong Kong, China)
• Shepperton Studios (UK)
• Sherwood Pictures (USA)
• Solax Studios (USA)
• Sony Pictures Entertainment (USA)
• Soyuzmultfilm (Russia)
• Spiderwood Studios (USA)
• Spyglass Entertainment (USA)
• Studio Babelsberg (Germany)
• StudioCanal (UK & Canada)
• Summit Entertainment (USA)
• Sverdlovsk Film Studio (Russia)
• Thanhouser Company (USA)
• The Studios At Las Colinas (USA)
• Three Mills Studios (UK)
• THX (USA Australia Brazil & UK)
• Toei (Japan)
• Toho (Japan)
• Touchstone Pictures (USA)
• Trak Home Video (UK)
• Triangle Film Corporation (USA)
• Tribune Entertainment (USA & Cuba)
• TriStar Pictures (USA & UK)
• Troublemaker Studios (USA)
• Twickenham Film Studios (UK)
• United Artists (USA UK Ohio & Cuba)
• Universal Studios (USA)
• USA Studios (USA)
• Victor Studios (USA)
• Village Roadshow Pictures (USA & UK)
• Vitagraph Studios (USA)
• Walt Disney Pictures (USA & UK)
• Warner Bros. (USA)
• Wimbledon Studios (UK)
• The Weinstein Company (USA)
• World Wide Pictures (USA)
• Village Roadshow (Australia)
• Vishesh Films (India)
• Yash Raj Films (India)
• KRU Studios (Malaysia)

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Movie studio

• Production company
• Major film studio
• Film producer
• Film release
• Film
• History of film
• List of cities containing film studios

Video and film[link]

2012 (film) 9 (2009 film) A (film) Actor (film) Agency (film) Bird (film)