Cinema of the United States: History and Key Facts

The film industry of the United States, primarily associated with major film studios collectively referred to as "Hollywood", has significantly influenced the global film industry since the early 20th century.

Classical Hollywood cinema, a filmmaking style developed in the 1910s, continues to shape many American films today. While French filmmakers Auguste and Louis Lumière are often credited with modern cinema's origins, American filmmaking quickly rose to global dominance. As of 2024, the United States produced 544 national feature films, making it the world's fourth-largest film producer after India, Japan and China. Although the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand also produce English-language films, they are not directly part of the Hollywood system. Due to this global reach, Hollywood is frequently regarded as a transnational cinema with some films released in multiple language versions, such as Spanish and French.

Contemporary Hollywood frequently outsources production to countries including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The five major film studios—Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Walt Disney Studios, Sony Pictures—are media conglomerates that dominate American box office revenue and have produced some of the most commercially successful film and television programs worldwide. Adjusted for inflation, Gone with the Wind (1939) is the highest-grossing film of all time.

In 1894, the world's first commercial motion-picture exhibition was held in New York City using Thomas Edison's kinetoscope and kinetograph. In the following decades, the production of silent films greatly expanded. New studios formed, migrated to California, and began to create longer films. The United States produced the world's first sync-sound musical film, The Jazz Singer in 1927, and was at the forefront of sound-film development in the following decades.

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Text excerpted from Cinema of the United States by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.