The studio model
Major Hollywood film studios such as Disney and Warner Brothers not only finance and make their own films but also distribute them.
A prominent film industry built up in Hollywood, California at the start of the 20th century.
That means they take responsibility for getting their films seen by the audience.
Major studio releases are first distributed to cinemas and cinema chains.
In the past this meant they had to dispatch heavy reels of 35mm film prints to every cinema wishing to show a film which was a cumbersome and expensive process.
Nowadays the invention of digital projectors means that distributors can instead deliver portable hard drives containing digital copies of films to cinemas.
If a film is popular with audiences it can remain in cinemas for weeks, but unpopular films with poor ticket sales may finish their run in a single week.
This system of releasing films is called The process used by film studios to make movies available to cinemas and cinema chains for viewing by an audience.
After a studio film has finished playing in cinemas it will be sold to home video markets.
Studio films will usually be available for sale on Blu-Ray or DVD within three to six months of leaving cinemas.
After that they will also become available for viewing on subscription movie channels.
Two or more years after a film has been released it may be shown on free to air television with broadcasters such as the BBC paying a fee to the studio in order to show the film.
Studios can also sell their films to online streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime.
The increasingly high cost of studio films means that many of these major releases now have to earn hundreds of millions of dollars if they are to generate a profit.
