American Film Industry-Timeline

• 1930 – The movie industry begins to dub in the dialogue of films. They invested a lot of money into putting sound into cinema. First run cinemas were owned by the big 5 (RKO, Metro Goldwyn Mayer, 20^th century fox, Warner bros and Paramount picture) and the little 3.The motion picture industry adopts the Production Code, a set of guidelines that describes what is acceptable in movies.

• 1933- The writers’ guild was founded. Twentieth Century Pictures was formed in 1933 as an independent Hollywood film production company, created by Joseph Schenck (from UA), and Darryl F. Zanuck (from Warners).

• 1934- The Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association appoints Joseph Breen to enforce the Production Code. The first drive-in movie theater opens in New Jersey.

• 1935- RKO’s and Rouben Mamoulian’s Becky Sharp (1935) was the first feature-length Technicolor film to be shot entirely in 3-strip. Twentieth Century Pictures and the Fox Film Corporation (founded by William Fox in 1915) merged to form 20th Century-Fox.

• 1936- The first full-length animated feature, Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), was released – made for a budget of $1.5 million. Screen writers guild was formed.

• 1937- Walt Disney’s Silly Symphonies short animated film, The Old Mill, was the first cartoon to be produced with the multi-plane camera, which gave an increased sense of movement and depth.

• 1938- All the major movie studios (the Big Five) were sued in 1938 by the U.S. Department of Justice in the government’s anti-trust lawsuit against unfair trade practices, claiming that the studios monopolized both the production and distribution of motion pictures. Eventually, the case reached the US Supreme Court 10 years later, in a decision against the movie studios.

• 1940- The first agents began to assemble creative talent and stories in exchange for a percentage of the film’s profits.

• 1943- Columbia Pictures released its first Technicolor film, a western called The Desperadoes (1943) with Glenn Ford and Randolph Scott.

• 1946- Universal Pictures merged with the independent production company International Pictures to become Universal International.

• 1947- Britain imposed a 75 percent duty on Hollywood films and the American studios responded by boycotting the British market.

• 1949- Paramount signed a consent decree, agreeing to separate its production and distribution activities. Loew’s (owner of MGM), 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros. were ordered to divest themselves of their theaters.

• 1951- The Motion Pictures Production Code specifically prohibited films dealing with abortion or narcotics.

• 1952- Universal International was sold to Decca Records.

• 1953- Buena Vista Distribution Company was formed to act as Disney’s film distributor. The first animated cartoon short filmed in 3-D, Walt Disney’s Technicolored Melody (1953), was premiered. Columbia Pictures was the first major studio to release a 3-D movie – Man in the Dark (1953), their first 3-D feature

• 1962-More than 700 foreign-language films were released in US theaters. Universal was purchased by talent agency MCA.

• 1964-Sony began marketing the first reel-to-reel (video tape recorder) VTR designed specifically for home use.

• 1966- Paramount’s purchase by Gulf & Western marked the beginning of a trend toward studio ownership by diversified, multi-national conglomerates. It was the first instance of a Hollywood studio being acquired by a corporate conglomerate.

• 1969- Sony introduced a new device — the videocassette recorder (VCR) for home use.

• 1973- The once-powerful MGM Studios abandoned most of its movie-making business because of a string of failures due to ownership changes and bad production choices. To maximize profits from weekend audiences, the industry decided to move major film openings from mid-week to Fridays

• 1976- Sony was charged with copyright infringement by Universal Studios and the Walt Disney Company, seeking to halt the manufacture of Sony’s Betamax magnetic videotape recording system. Gone with the Wind (1939) first aired on network TV and drew a huge audience over two nights – about 34 million people – the largest ever film audience to watch a feature film on television.

• 1978- Disney licensed its cartoon compilations to MCA’s Disco Vision – these were the first Disney videos available to the public. Orion Pictures Corporation was formed as a joint organization between Warner Bros.

• 1980- Friday the 13thmade its debuted – it was the first segment in one of the longest running, most prolific and financially-successful horror film series of all time. It was one of the first splatter-films to be picked up as a franchise by a major studio – Paramount Pictures.

• 1987- The first major Hollywood studio film produced (or shot) in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), in Shanghai, was director Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun (1987).

• 1988- The Best Picture of the year, Rain Man (1988) was the year’s highest-grossing (domestic) film at $172.8 million, surpassing Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) at $156.5 million.

• 1989- The Sony Corporation of America purchased Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc. and Tri-Star Pictures from Coca-Cola for $3.4 billion, naming itself Sony Pictures Entertainment. Warner Communications merged with Time, Inc. in March of 1989, to form and become the largest media company in the world, Time Warner. The highest-grossing (domestic) movie of the year was director Tim Burton’s neo-gothic and dark Batman (1989).

• 1990- The merger was finally completed in 1990, when Warner Communications and Time Inc. formed Time/Warner, the largest communications merger to date, at a cost of $14 billion. Director Chris Columbus’ Home Alone (1990), with a screenplay by producer John Hughes, opened and became a box-office hit (the highest-grossing film of its year at $285.7 million).

• 1994-Dream works studios was founded. Turner Broadcasting Systems merged with New Line Cinema. Disney became the first studio to gross more than $1 billion at the box office domestically in a single year, mostly due to the release of The Lion King (1994).

• 1995- The cutting-edge Toy Story (1995) was the first totally-digital (or computer-generated) feature-length animated film. It was noted as being Pixar’s first feature to be released in theaters, in collaboration with Disney, in November of 1995. Warner Bros. created the WB Network, a TV broadcast outlet for its TV properties.

• 1997- The blockbuster film Titanic (1997) had a record-tying fourteen nominations and won a record-tying eleven Academy Awards. The British comedy film The Full Monty (1997) was an unexpected sleeper hit.

• 2000- The Hollywood studio system was dominated by six global entertainment companies: Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal, and Disney. These six companies generally farmed out the production of their films to literally dozens of other independents and subsidiaries.