page_title: Film industry
section_title: United States
hierarchical_section_title: Film industry / Modern film industry / United States
caption_attribution_description: First Hollywood studio built by Dave Horsley for the Nestor Company at the corner of Gower Street and Sunset Boulevard.
context_page_description: The film industry or motion picture industry, comprises the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking, i.e., film production companies, film studios, cinematography, animation, film production, screenwriting, pre-production, post production, film festivals, distribution and actors, film directors and other film crew personnel. Though the expense involved in making films almost immediately led film production to concentrate under the auspices of standing production companies, advances in affordable film making equipment, and expansion of opportunities to acquire investment capital from outside the film industry itself, have allowed independent film production to evolve.
  In 2018, the global box office was worth $41.7 billion. When including box office and home entertainment revenue, the global film industry was worth $136 billion in 2018. Hollywood is the world's oldest national film industry, and remains the largest in terms of box office gross revenue. Indian cinema is the largest national film industry in terms of the number of films produced, with 1,813 feature films produced annually as of 2018.
context_section_description: The cinema of the United States, often generally referred to as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. The United States cinema (Hollywood) is the oldest film industry in the world and also the largest film industry in terms of revenue. Hollywood is the primary nexus of the U.S. film industry with established film study facilities such as the American Film Institute, LA Film School and NYFA being established in the area. However, four of the six major film studios are owned by East Coast companies. The major film studios of Hollywood including Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 20th Century Fox, and Paramount Pictures are the primary source of the most commercially successful movies in the world, such as  Star Wars (1977), and Titanic (1997).
  
  American film studios today collectively generate several hundred films every year, making the United States one of the most prolific producers of films in the world. Only The Walt Disney Company — which owns the Walt Disney Studios — is fully based in Southern California. And while Sony Pictures Entertainment is headquartered in Culver City, California, its parent company, the Sony Corporation, is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. Most shooting now takes place in California, New York, Louisiana, Georgia and North Carolina. Between 2009–2015, Hollywood consistently grossed $10 billion (or more) annually. Hollywood's award ceremony, the Academy Awards, officially known as The Oscars, is held by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) every year and as of 2019, more than 3,000 Oscars have been awarded.
  On 27 October 1911, Nestor Film Company established Hollywood's first permanent film studio. The California weather allowed for year-round filming. In 1912, Universal Studios was formed, merging Nestor and several other motion picture companies, including Independent Moving Pictures (IMP).
caption: Nestor studio, 1911
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "2214", "Image ImageLength": "3268", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2014:10:27 08:08:33", "Image ExifOffset": "232", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "382", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7923", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "962", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "765"}