Meanwhile, Sony is in Tokyo, and is the only one owned by a foreign conglomerate. Walt Disney Studios was also the sole studio whose parent entity is still located near Los Angeles, but then a second was added in 2019, with their buyout of 20th Century Fox (which is itself located in Los Angeles in the Century City area). Disney is the only studio that has been owned by the same conglomerate since its founding, and the offices of that parent entity are still located on Disney's studio lot and in the same building. and Disney are both located in Burbank and Universal is in the nearby unincorporated area of Universal City, while Sony is in Culver City. While the main studios of the Big Five are located within 15 miles (24 km) of each other, Paramount is the only member of the Big Five still based in Hollywood and located entirely within the official city limits of the City of Los Angeles. In 1989, it acquired Columbia Pictures Entertainment, which became Sony Pictures Entertainment in 1991. as the only early Big Five members to remain as majors today. This acquisition also left Paramount and Warner Bros. Meanwhile, that era ultimately came to an end in 2019 with Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox including TCF, which resulted in a "Big Five" for the first since Hollywood’s Golden Age. At this time, MGM became a mini-major upon the sale from Turner to Kerkorian in 1986, thus retaining the Big Six. Along with these were the remaining two of the original Little Three (Columbia and Universal). These included four of those early Big Five (Paramount, Warner Bros., MGM, and 20th Century Fox) RKO had gone defunct in 1959. At that time, it joined what by then were the "Big Six" majors. The other two of the Little Three, which had each later grown to major status, were United Artists – a former distribution company for several independent producers, it later began producing its own films and was then acquired by MGM in 1981 – and Columbia Pictures – it produced and distributed films and was eventually merged in 1987 with Tri-Star Pictures to form Columbia Pictures Entertainment.Īnother case is that of Walt Disney Productions, which, during the Golden Age, was an independent production company and an important Hollywood entity that was not regarded as a major at all until the mid-1980s. In one case – Universal Pictures – this studio was, during that early era, also considered a major but in the lower tier: one of the members of the "Little Three" (among those original Big Eight). – each of these is not only one of today's "Big Five" but were also part of the original "Big Five" (from among those Big Eight) in that " Golden Age", along with RKO Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and 20th Century Fox. In the case of two of them – Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. Three of these were among that original era's "Big Eight" major film studios. The current "Big Five" majors all originate with film studios that were active during Hollywood's "Golden Age". It is "nearly impossible" for a film to reach a broad international theatrical audience without being first picked up by one of the majors for distribution. Today, the Big Five majors – Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Walt Disney Pictures, and Columbia Pictures – routinely distribute hundreds of films every year into all significant international markets (that is, where discretionary income is high enough for consumers to afford to watch films). studios have benefited from a strong first-mover advantage in that they were the first to industrialize filmmaking and master the art of mass-producing and distributing high-quality films with broad cross-cultural appeal. major film studios have dominated both American cinema and the global film industry. The term may also be applied more specifically to the primary motion picture business subsidiary of each respective conglomerate. In the American and international markets, the major film studios, often known simply as the majors or the Big Five studios, are commonly regarded as the five diversified media conglomerates whose various film production and distribution subsidiaries collectively command approximately 80 to 85% of U.S. Major film studios are production and distribution companies that release a substantial number of films annually and consistently command a significant share of box office revenue in a given market. Class=notpageimage| Big Five studios in Hollywood (Paramount) and on the Westside (Columbia)