Before the Golden Age In 1909,
Thomas Edison, who had been fighting in the courts for years for control of fundamental motion picture patents, won a major decision. This led to the creation of the
Motion Picture Patents Company, widely known as the Trust. Comprising the eight largest U.S. film companies, it was "designed to eliminate not only independent film producers but also the country's 10,000 independent [distribution] exchanges and exhibitors." Though its many members did not consolidate their filmmaking operations, the New York–based Trust was arguably the first major North American movie conglomerate. The independents' fight against the Trust was led by
Carl Laemmle, whose Chicago-based Laemmle Film Service, serving the Midwest and Canada, was the largest distribution exchange in North America. Laemmle's efforts were rewarded in 1912 when the U.S. government ruled that the Trust was a "corrupt and unlawful association" and must be dissolved. On June 8, 1912, Laemmle organized the merger of his production division, IMP (Independent Motion Picture Company), with several other filmmaking companies, creating the
Universal Film Manufacturing Company in
New York City. By the end of the year, Universal was making movies at two Los Angeles facilities: the former Nestor Film studio in Hollywood, and another studio in
Edendale. The first Hollywood major studio was in business. In 1916, a second powerful Hollywood studio was established when
Adolph Zukor merged his
Famous Players Film Company movie production house with the
Jesse L. Lasky Company to form
Famous Players–Lasky. The combined studio acquired
Paramount Pictures as a distribution arm and eventually adopted its name. That same year,
William Fox relocated his
Fox Film Corporation from
Fort Lee, New Jersey to Hollywood and began expanding. In 1918, four brothers—
Harry,
Albert,
Sam, and
Jack Warner—founded the
first Warner Bros. Studio on
Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. On April 4, 1923, the Warner Bros. incorporated their fledgling movie company as "
Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc.". Though their first film was
My Four Years in Germany, Warner Bros. released their full-fledged movie
The Jazz Singer in 1927. Warner Bros. were the pioneers of the
sound film era as they established
Vitaphone. Because of
The Jazz Singer's success (along with
Lights of New York,
The Singing Fool and
The Terror), Warner Bros. was eventually able to acquire a
much larger studio in Burbank, which it began to use starting in 1928 (and which is famous for its
signature water tower). Warner Bros. eventually expanded its studio operations to Leavesden in London.
Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden is the main studio in production of hit movies like the
Harry Potter film series,
The Dark Knight and the recent ones like
The Batman and
Ready Player One. In 1923,
Walt Disney had founded the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio and The Disney Brothers Features Company with his brother
Roy and animator
Ub Iwerks. Renamed as
Walt Disney Productions, Disney became a powerful independent over the next three decades focusing on animation with its shorts and films being distributed over the years by various majors; primarily Leslie B. Mace, Winkler Pictures, Universal Pictures, Celebrity Productions, Cinephone, Columbia Pictures, United Artists, United Artists Pictures and finally RKO. In its first year in 1928, Celebrity Productions and Cinephone had released its first blockbuster
Steamboat Willie. In the decades that followed, Disney and its associated distributors were able to achieve occasional successes, but its relatively small output and exclusive focus on G-rated films meant that it was not generally considered to be one of the majors. In 1924,
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was founded by
Marcus Loew by combining
Metro Pictures,
Goldwyn Pictures (including its
Culver City studio lot, its
Leo the Lion "Ars Gratia Artis" slogan, and its contracted stars and projects), and
Louis B. Mayer Pictures into one company. The Motion Picture Theatre Owners of America and the Independent Producers' Association declared war in 1925 on what they termed a common enemy — the "film trust" of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount, and
First National, which they claimed dominated the industry by not only producing and distributing motion pictures, but by entering into exhibition as well. On October 6, 1927, Warner Bros. released
The Jazz Singer, starring
Al Jolson, and a whole new era began, with "pictures that talked", bringing the studio to the forefront of the film industry.
The Jazz Singer played to standing-room-only crowds throughout the country and earned a special
Academy Award for Technical Achievement. Fox, in the forefront of
sound film technology along with Warner Bros., was also acquiring a sizable circuit of movie theaters to exhibit its product. The development of sound films like
The Jazz Singer near the end of the
Roaring Twenties resulted in a massive rush of Americans to movie theaters to watch the astonishing new "talkies". Of these eight, the so-called Big Five were integrated conglomerates, combining ownership of a production studio, distribution division, and substantial theater chain, and contracting with performers and filmmaking personnel: Loews/MGM, Paramount, Fox (which became 20th Century-Fox after a 1935 merger), Warner Bros., and RKO. The remaining majors were sometimes referred to as the "Little Three" or "major minor" studios. Among the significant characteristics of the Golden Age was the stability of the Hollywood majors, their hierarchy, and their near-complete domination of the box office. At the midpoint of the Golden Age, 1939, the Big Five had market shares ranging from 22% (MGM) to 9% (RKO); each of the Little Three had around a 7% share. In sum, the eight majors controlled 95% of the market. Ten years later, the picture was largely the same: the Big Five had market shares ranging from 22% (MGM) to 9% (RKO); the Little Three had shares ranging from 8% (Columbia) to 4% (United Artists). In sum, the eight majors controlled 96% of the market.
After the Golden Age 1950–1969 The end of the Golden Age had been signaled by the majors' loss of a
federal antitrust case that led to the divestiture of the Big Five's theater chains. Though this had virtually no immediate effect on the eight majors' box-office domination, it somewhat leveled the playing field between the Big Five and the Little Three. In November 1951,
Decca Records purchased 28% of Universal; early the following year, the studio became the first of the classic Hollywood majors to be taken over by an outside corporation, as Decca acquired majority ownership. In 1953, Disney established its own distribution division,
Buena Vista Film Distribution, to handle its own product which had been largely distributed by RKO. The 1950s also saw two substantial shifts in the hierarchy of the majors: RKO, perennially the weakest of the Big Five, declined rapidly under the mismanagement of
Howard Hughes, who had purchased a controlling interest in the studio in 1948. By the time Hughes sold it to the
General Tire and Rubber Company in 1955, the studio was a major by outdated reputation alone. In 1957, virtually all RKO movie operations ceased and the studio was dissolved in 1959. (Revived on a small scale in 1981, it was eventually spun off and now operates as a minor independent company.) In contrast, there was United Artists, which had long operated under the financing-distribution model the other majors were now progressively shifting toward. Under
Arthur Krim and
Robert Benjamin, who began managing the company in 1951, UA became consistently profitable. By 1956—when it released one of the biggest blockbusters of the decade,
Around the World in 80 Days—it commanded a 10% market share. By the middle of the next decade, it had reached 16% and was the second-most profitable studio in Hollywood. Despite RKO's collapse, the remaining seven majors still averaged a total yearly release slate of 253 feature films during the decade. Like RKO in its last days under Hughes, MGM remained a major in terms of brand reputation, but little more. Disney by contrast began to ascend towards major status through a resurgence in its animated movies, beginning with
The Rescuers (1977), and the studio began to enter the adult market with
The Black Hole (1979), its first non-G rated film. By the mid-1970s, the industry had rebounded and a significant philosophical shift was in progress. As the majors focused increasingly on the development of the next hoped-for blockbuster and began routinely opening each new movie in many hundreds of theaters (an approach called "saturation booking"), their collective yearly release average fell to 81 films during 1975–84.
Tri-Star Pictures was created in 1982 as a joint venture of future corporate sibling Columbia Pictures (at that time acquired by the
Coca-Cola Company),
HBO (then owned by Warner Bros. Discovery's predecessor
Time Inc.), and
CBS. In 1985,
Rupert Murdoch's
News Corporation acquired 20th Century-Fox (dropping the hyphen), the last of both the classic Hollywood majors and the Golden Age majors to be taken over by an outside corporation. It remained an independent studio until its 2019 sale to Disney brought back the total majors back to a "Big Five". Meanwhile, a new member was finally admitted to the club of major studios and two significant contenders emerged. With the combined output of
Walt Disney Pictures, the establishment of the
Touchstone Pictures brand in 1984, and increasing attention to the adult live-action market during the early 1980s, Disney/Buena Vista secured acknowledgment as a full-fledged major. By 1986, the combined share of the six classic majors — Paramount, MGM/UA, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., Columbia and Universal — fell to 64%, the lowest since the beginning of the Golden Age. Disney was in third place, behind only Paramount and Warner. Even including Disney/Buena Vista as a seventh major and adding its 10% share, the majors' control of the North American market was at a historic ebb. Orion (now completely independent of Warner) and Tri-Star were well positioned as mini-majors, each with North American market shares of around 6% and regarded by industry observers as "fully competitive with the majors", much like MGM and Lionsgate by the turn of the century. Smaller independents garnered 13%—more than any studio aside from Paramount. In 1964, by comparison, all of the companies outside of the then-seven majors and Disney had combined for a grand total of 1%. In the first edition of Finler's
The Hollywood Story (1988), he wrote, "It will be interesting to see whether the old-established studios will be able to bounce back in the future, as they have done so many times before, or whether the newest developments really do reflect a fundamental change in the US movie industry for the first times since the 20s."
1990–2009 With the exception of MGM/UA—whose position was effectively supplanted by Disney—the old-established studios did bounce back. The aforementioned purchase of
20th Century Fox by
Rupert Murdoch's
News Corporation left Disney as the only company under original ownership and presaged a new round of corporate acquisitions not long afterward. As part of that series, Columbia, Paramount and Warner Bros. received new owners once and for all while Universal changed corporate hands until the mid-2000s. Paramount's parent company
Gulf+Western was renamed Paramount Communications and Coca-Cola sold Columbia to Japanese electronics firm
Sony in 1989, creating
Sony Pictures. The following year,
Warner Communications merged with
Time Inc. to birth
Time Warner and Universal's parent company
MCA was purchased by fellow Japanese electronics conglomerate
Matsushita. At this time, both Tri-Star and Orion were essentially out of business: the former merged with Sony and Columbia, the latter bankrupt and sold to MGM. The most important contenders to emerge during the 1990s with Viacom's purchase of Paramount Communications in 1994 —
New Line Cinema,
Miramax, and
DreamWorks SKG — were likewise sooner or later brought into the majors' fold. Shortly after, Matsushita sold MCA (and Universal) to Seagram in 1996, then
Vivendi in 2000, and later NBC's parent company
General Electric in 2004 to become NBCUniversal. The development of in-house pseudo-indie subsidiaries by the conglomerates—sparked by the 1992 establishment of
Sony Pictures Classics and the success of
Pulp Fiction (1994) on home video, significantly undermined the position of the true independents. The majors' release schedule rebounded: the six (later five) primary studio subsidiaries alone put out a total of 124 films during 2006; the three largest secondary subsidiaries (New Line, Fox Searchlight, and Focus Features) accounted for another 30. Box-office domination was fully restored: in 2006, the then-six (now five) major movie conglomerates combined for 89.8% of the North American market; Lionsgate and Weinstein were almost exactly half as successful as their 1986 mini-major counterparts, sharing 6.1%; MGM came in at 1.8%; and all of the remaining independent companies split a pool totaling 2.3%. More developments took place among the majors' subsidiaries. The very successful animation production house
Pixar, whose films were distributed by Buena Vista, was acquired by Disney also in 2006. In 2008, New Line Cinema lost its independent status within Time Warner and became a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Time Warner also announced that it would be shutting down its two specialty units, Warner Independent and Picturehouse. Also in 2008, Paramount Vantage's production, marketing, and distribution departments were folded into the parent studio, though it retained the brand for release purposes. Universal sold off its genre specialty division, Rogue Pictures, to
Relativity Media in 2009.
2010–present In January 2010, Disney closed down Miramax's operations and sold off the unit and its library that July to an investor group led by Ronald N. Tutor of the
Tutor Perini construction firm and
Tom Barrack of the
Colony Capital private equity firm. In January 2011, the majority of
Universal was acquired by Comcast when acquiring 51% of NBCUniversal from General Electric before acquiring the remaining 49% and taking complete ownership in March 2013. On December 14, 2017, The Walt Disney Company (the parent company of major film studio Walt Disney Studios)
announced to acquire key assets of
21st Century Fox (including fellow major film studio
20th Century Fox along with
Fox Searchlight Pictures). After winning the bidding war for Fox against Comcast, both Disney and Fox shareholders approved the deal on July 27, 2018, and completed on March 20, 2019. From June 14, 2018, until its acquisition by Discovery in 2022, Warner Bros. was owned by
AT&T, which completed its acquisition of Time Warner, renaming it "WarnerMedia", which contained all assets owned by Warner Bros. and its subsidiaries. On August 13, 2019, Paramount Pictures parent, Viacom, announced
its reunion with CBS Corporation, and the combined company would be called
ViacomCBS, renamed Paramount also in 2022. The two companies previously merged in 2000 but split in 2005. The deal was completed on December 4, 2019. Meanwhile, CBS Corporation's mini-major film studio, CBS Films was folded into CBS Entertainment Group after releasing its 2019 film slate, switching its focus to creating original film content for
CBS All Access. On January 17, 2020, Disney discontinued the "Fox" name from both 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight Pictures and rebranded them as
20th Century Studios and
Searchlight Pictures respectively, to avoid brand confusion with
Fox Corporation. The "Searchlight Pictures" and "20th Century Studios" name were first seen on
Downhill on February 14, and on
The Call of the Wild a week later on February 21 respectively. The studios were affected by the
COVID-19 pandemic with some cinema chains closing, precipitating
box office flops (like Disney's
Onward or Sony's
Bloodshot). Several films were delayed (Universal and MGM's
No Time to Die or Paramount's
A Quiet Place Part II and even Disney's
Black Widow and
Mulan) and others were launched to the digital market (like Universal's
The Invisible Man and
Trolls World Tour and Warner Bros.'
Birds of Prey,
Scoob! and
Wonder Woman 1984). On May 16, 2021, it was reported that AT&T was in talks with
Discovery, Inc. for it to merge with and acquire Warner Bros.' parent company
WarnerMedia, forming a publicly traded company that would be divided between its shareholders. The proposed spin-off and acquisition was officially announced the next day, which was structured as a
Reverse Morris Trust. AT&T shareholders would receive a 71% stake in the enlarged Discovery, which would be led by its current CEO
David Zaslav. As the transaction closed on April 8, 2022, Discovery renamed itself
Warner Bros. Discovery and ended AT&T's investment in the entertainment business. On the same day after the announcement of the acquisition/merger of
WarnerMedia by
Discovery,
Amazon entered negotiations with MGM Holdings to acquire Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The negotiations were made directly with MGM board chairman Kevin Ulrich whose
Anchorage Capital Group is a major shareholder. MGM already began to explore a potential sale of the studio since December 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic and the domination of streaming platforms due to the closure of movie theaters as contributing factors. On May 26, 2021, it was officially announced that MGM would be acquired by Amazon for $8.45 billion, subject to regulatory approvals and other routine closing conditions; with the studio continuing to operate as a label under Amazon's existing content arm, complementing
Amazon Studios and
Amazon Prime Video. The acquisition closed on March 17, 2022. On April 18, 2024, rumors began to circulate that Sony Pictures and
Apollo Global Management were interested in jointly acquiring Paramount Global. Sony and Apollo presented a $26 billion all-cash offer to acquire Paramount Global on May 5, 2024. According to The New York Times, the board of directors of Paramount Global formally commenced negotiations with Sony and Apollo over the possible sale of the company. If the deal is finalized, Sony will rank third in worldwide film studio rankings, behind The Walt Disney Company and NBCUniversal. In the US and Canada alone, Sony would have a 20.81% market share. On June 3, 2024, Paramount Global reportedly agreed to change mergers from Sony to
Skydance Media for $8 billion. Skydance would first acquire
National Amusements, which controls 80% of the voting shares of Paramount and then pump cash into Paramount, which would then acquire Skydance. At first unsuccessful in June 2024, Skydance reached a preliminary agreement on July 2, 2024, to acquire National Amusements and
merge with Paramount, to form "
Paramount Skydance Corporation". On December 5, 2025,
Netflix announced that it intended to purchase Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion. The acquisition was expected to be completed after the previously announced separation of WBD's Global Networks division, Discovery Global, into a new publicly-traded company in the third quarter of 2026. On February 15, 2026,
Bloomberg reported that Warner Bros. Discovery was considering reopening sale talks after
Paramount Skydance made a new offer. On February 27, 2026, Paramount Skydance confirms their deal of acquiring all of Warner Bros. Discovery for $110 billion. The deal is expected to be closed before the end of the year. == Historical organizational lineage ==