History MediaNotes / TheBlockbusterAgeOfHollywood

There are many waves and stretches for the Blockbuster era. The first wave is 1982 which saw the release of a slew of summer blockbusters that are now regarded as classics, including: ''Film/ETTheExtraTerrestrial'', ''Film/TheThing1982'', ''Film/RockyIII'', ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan'', ''Film/ConanTheBarbarian1982'', ''Film/BladeRunner'', ''Film/{{Poltergeist|1982}}'', ''Film/{{TRON}}'', and ''Film/TheRoadWarrior'' with the caveat that ''Blade Runner'', ''TRON'' and ''The Thing'' were flops. 1982 is often regarded as Hollywood's second "golden year" in terms of creativity and classic films, not unlike how 1939 is considered to be the highpoint of MediaNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfHollywood. Other memorable films released around this time include ''Film/{{Ghostbusters 1984}}'', ''Film/RaidersOfTheLostArk'', ''Film/BackToTheFuture1'', and the first film to be released with the new PG-13 rating, ''Film/RedDawn1984''. However, unlike 1939, 1982 most certainly did ''not'' come at a high point for the studios financially. Hollywood spent much of TheEighties reeling from the fallout of the MediaNotes/NewHollywood era, and the combined share of the six surviving major studios from the [[MediaNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfHollywood Golden Age]] had fallen to just 64% by 1986 -- the lowest it had been since the days of silent film. Two young studios -- Orion and Tri-Star (the former was a company formed by executives of United Artists who'd fled that company shortly before the ''Heaven's Gate'' debacle; the latter was initially a joint venture of Columbia, Creator/{{CBS}} and Creator/{{HBO}}) -- maintained about 6% market share each, Disney had about 10%, and smaller independents (the largest being Creator/NewLineCinema, "the house that [[Franchise/ANightmareOnElmStreet Freddy]] built") would together make up 13% (more than any one studio besides Paramount).

While movies have always depended on other media for material, adaptations of popular works would not become a dominating force in the industry until 2001, the year Creator/WarnerBros released films based on the literary sagas of ''Literature/HarryPotter'' and ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', which would become the two biggest films of a year that also saw the debuts of the ''Franchise/{{Shrek}}'', ''Film/OceansEleven'' and ''Film/TheFastAndTheFurious'' sagas. The success of both ''The Sorcerer's Stone'' and ''The Fellowship of the Ring'' changed the industry entirely, even establishing the modern storytelling structure found in Hollywood films. Their successes immediately sent waves to the other studios, now urged to look for a) "fantasy" material, as it is attractive to audiences of all ages, b) a propriety with long-term potential, and most importantly c) get your hands on anything popular (extending the previous point) -- a video game, a 1980s TV show (preferably a cartoon), a comic strip, toys or even ''internet symbols'' -- to take advantage of existing fandoms and merchandising.

The main reason for this flood of adaptations, sequels, remakes, reboots and the like was a series of improvements on the home entertainment field during the second half of the 1990s and the early part of the 2000s: Cable TV became ubiquitous, with channels upping their ante on terms of original content, especially in the case of "premium" networks such as Creator/{{HBO}} and Creator/{{AMC}}, both of which launched series with unheard-of production values such as ''The Sopranos'' and ''Curb Your Enthusiasm''. Meanwhile, the booming Internet, game consoles and the fact that TV networks were skewing towards younger audiences kept the coveted 15-34 demographic away from the movie house. To complicate matters, the arrival of [=DVDs=] meant that people could enjoy a movie at home not only with reliable, high-quality image and sound compared to VHS, but also allowed access to added features and other freebies. Their popularity and later decline led to the "theatrical window" to shrink from six months (or more) to 90 days, which added to the urge for higher first-weekend grosses at the box-office. All this also contributed to the use of gimmicks to attract audiences: IMAX offered high-resolution images at a time HDTV was a novelty while 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound systems attempted to counter the popularity of "home theaters". Later on, movie circuits began adding "premium" services with reclining bergere-type seats and dine-in options. These changes eventually translated in a general increase on the prices of tickets from the mid-2000s onwards, and grosses have increased in a sustained basis even if attendance hasn't reached the heights of the late 1990s and early 2000s (peaking with 2002's 1,575,700,000 admissions, with no year surpassing 1.4 billion tickets after 2009).

The releases of James Cameron's ''Film/{{Avatar}}'' (which surpassed ''Titanic'''s record, holding the title of the highest-grossing movie for nine years) and Creator/TimBurton's ''Film/AliceInWonderland2010'' led to a(nother) three-dimensional craze, although it did not take long for the arrival of a glut of poorly-made films with 3-D added in post-production mostly to make them marketable. All this alienated audiences, which saw in 3-D an excuse to rise prices further instead of actually using it to improve storytelling or experience, the fact some theaters had no "flat" prints becoming an annoyance to many who did not have the money or the inclination to see a 3-D movie. By the end of the 2011-12 season, 3-D pretty much became the province of animated films and superhero movies, being gradually and quietly sidelined by the middle of the decade, although without ''completely'' disappearing in contrast to previous 3-D waves.

Adult comedies, which had become increasingly successful during the late 1990s and early 2000s with films like ''Film/TheresSomethingAboutMary'', ''Film/AmericanPie''. ''Film/DudeWheresMyCar'' and ''Film/ScaryMovie'', came to the forefront with the surprise success of 2005's ''Film/TheFortyYearOldVirgin'', which sparked a trend for outrageous humor, including [[Film/DateMovie genre]] [[Film/TropicThunder satires]] in the vein of ''SM'', [[Film/{{Borat}} ethnic humor]] [[RuleOfThree and]] {{stoner|s are funny}} [[Film/PineappleExpress hijinks]], the trend hitting its peak in 2009, when ''Film/TheHangover'' became one of the ten highest-grossing films of the year. By this time, even comedies promoted to family audiences would offer material that would have been considered distasteful years earlier. 2010 however, marked a turning point, as stricter MPAA guidelines made it harder to portray borderline-vulgar material, particularly prominent in these films. Social attitudes towards humor in general also shifted early in the decade, especially regarding the constant use of certain actions and language that had come to be considered offensive. 2011's ''The Hangover II'' and ''Bad Teacher'', 2012's ''Film/{{Ted}}'', 2013's ''The Hangover: Part III'' and 2014's ''Neighbors'' were among the few bona-fide comedic successes for the succeeding years, even though the sequels for ''Ted'' and ''Neighbors'' as well as a TV spin-off for ''Teachers'' became massive failures). With the exception of the superhero comedy ''Deadpool'' (2016), the animated film ''Sausage Party'' (also 2016), the two theatrical adaptations of ''Literature/{{It}}'' (2017-19) and the loosely-based-on-comics dramas ''Film/{{Logan}}'' (2017) and ''Film/{{Joker}}'' (2019), female-geared films pretty much became the only commercially-viable type of R-rated films during the 2010s, beginning with the ''Film/FiftyShadesOfGrey'' trilogy (2015-18). Similarly, comedy films became mostly geared to women after the success of ''Film/BadMoms'' (2016).

This has meant a shift on the animation industry, the irreverent humor of films like the ''Franchise/DespicableMe'' saga and ''WesternAnimation/TheLEGOMovie'' put Universal and Warner Bros. on the map as prominent makers of animated movies. In addition, Disney's in-house feature animation studio regained pulse with the enormous success of films like ''WesternAnimation/WreckItRalph'', ''WesternAnimation/Frozen2013'' and ''WesternAnimation/{{Zootopia}}''. Meanwhile, the already-established Creator/{{Pixar}} and Creator/DreamWorksAnimation faced numerous problems: "The House Woody and Buzz Built" faced its first critical failure with 2011's ''WesternAnimation/Cars2'' [[ToughActToFollow after the magnum opus that was]] ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory3'', released the previous year, and would not redeem itself until the release of ''WesternAnimation/InsideOut'' in 2015. They would however face their first domestic BoxOfficeBomb with ''WesternAnimation/TheGoodDinosaur'' that Winter, not returning to top form until 2017 with ''WesternAnimation/{{Coco}}'', which kicked off a renaissance of sorts for the studio. That same year, DWA released ''WesternAnimation/Home2015'', which ended a parade of flops which coincided with the studio's shift in tone towards more character-based stories following 2010's ''WesternAnimation/{{How to Train Your Dragon|2010}}''. The studio behind ''Shrek'' and ''Madagascar'' was absorbed by Comcast in 2016, becoming Illumination's "second unit".

The 2008 writers' strike heavily affected the film industry as these became more expensive. The solution came in the form of making less films, and more of them based on popular works. Budgets also grew higher to make up for the lesser quantity. However, this has brought concerns over a narrowing landscape, the bulk of mainstream releases being epics mostly aimed at young adults. As other audiences drifted to other platforms, numerous voices aired their concerns about the future of movies: Creator/StevenSpielberg commented on [[http://www.newser.com/story/199954/how-hollywood-killed-the-mid-budget-movie.html the disappearance of the "middle film"]], defending himself from cries of hypocrisy by pointing out [[GenreRoulette he made a wide variety of movies]] instead of just action/adventure or fantasy films. He also joined Creator/GeorgeLucas in his concerns that the current business model could collapse like in the 1960s if too many films bombed, in that case the model could shift into a system similar to live theater (or the "roadshow" treatment high-profile films often got during the Golden Age), with movies playing at certain locations for years on end. Between late 2010 and 2014, it didn't seem too far-fetched to see this scenario play out in the near future: In 2010-11 a number of family films flopped even if some of these were released in 3-D, killing the genre for live-action productions. The following years meanwhile saw much-hyped productions like ''Film/JohnCarter'', ''Film/TheLoneRanger'' and ''Film/DraculaUntold'' tank at the box-office. Contrast this with the fact the early 2010s became the peak years for cable TV with highly-regarded series like ''Breaking Bad'' and ''Mad Men'', leading some actors to consider the notion that "video work" was degrading to be no longer true.

The internet offers several new revenue streams for the studios, most notably streaming movies from home. With Netflix leading the way in this area, the studios can look ahead to a future where they can charge customers every time they want to watch movies at home -- something that was attempted in TheNineties with the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX_(Digital_Video_Express) DIVX]] disc system, but which didn't take (chiefly because DIVX was a physical format). Many of the major film companies are now planning to try out a "premium download" distribution model to offer downloads of their theatrical feature films only one or two months after their theatrical release for around $30 each, which means that, for a bit of patience, whole families could be able to forgo going to the cinema altogether. Of course, this has run into heavy resistance from theaters -- Universal was forced to cancel plans for a limited VOD release of ''Tower Heist'' after the Cinemark and National Amusements theater companies responded by threatening to refuse to show the film. Keep in mind that this VOD release was to happen in just two cities (UsefulNotes/{{Atlanta}} and UsefulNotes/{{Portland}}), and at a price of $60 per viewing. However, while many have feared this might be the end of the blockbusters, theatrical runs have not been replaced just yet.

The studio also scheduled a simultaneous theatrical and on-demand release of the much-hyped Creator/DreamworksAnimation feature film, ''WesternAnimation/TrollsWorldTour'', which proved a success with a 200 million+ haul that Universal doesn't have to share with online retailers to the same percentage that it would have had to do with the theatrical chains. The theatrical chains, took umbridge with that business move, especially when Universal forwent the opportunity to be diplomatic about it as an experiment for families looking for new entertainment during a trying time and announced more films would be similarly distributed in the future. As such, the major theatrical chain, AMC, announced that it would no longer exhibit Universal in its theatres, but few seriously expected that boycott to last considering that would mean forgoing the upcoming major blockbuster films of series like ''Film/TheFastAndTheFurious'' and ''Film/JamesBond'' when the theatre chains need all the major content they can get to attempt to regain their patrons.

Superhero films kept their previous stranglehold on the box office at first, with ''Film/VenomLetThereBeCarnage'', ''Film/ShangChiAndTheLegendOfTheTenRings'' and ''Film/SpiderManNoWayHome'' easily becoming successes, ''No Way Home'' managing to be the first movie in two years to break a billion dollars worldwide, followed by ''Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness'' and later on, ''Wakanda Forever''. However, the genre faced severe difficulties over 2022–23. First, ''Thor: Love and Thunder'' garnered mixed reviews and was a box-office disappointment (at least by the MCU's standards) while the DCEU became engulfed in various controversies, particularly regarding WB's shaky finances and Discovery's drastic measures to turn the studio around, including the erasing of ''Batgirl'' for tax purposes. Furthermore, ''Black Adam'' was thrashed by critics and floundered financially, leading to a war of words between Dwayne Johnson and DC Studios over how much the film made and thrusting WB into a slump just as Paramount was recovering from theirs. Late in 2022, James Gunn was appointed head of DC-related projects going forward...but his confirmation that the 2023 slate of DCEU films (''Shazam! Fury of the Gods'', ''The Flash'', ''Blue Beetle'', and ''Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom'') would be the last in that particular continuity contributed to the disastrous box office performances of all four films. Marvel's 2023 film slate had only one success story with ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxyVol3'', with ''Film/TheMarvels2023'' doing so poorly that Disney stopped reporting on its box office take just a month into its run, while future plans were compromised by the intended BigBad of the MCU's current and next phases, Kang the Conqueror, being played by an actor (Creator/JonathanMajors) whom Disney was compelled to fire after he was convicted of domestic abuse.

Increasing opposition to "day-and-date" releasing schemes came to a head when Tom Cruise insisted on keeping ''Top Gun: Maverick'' out of streaming as long as he could. The film's success soon convinced studios to return to exclusive theatrical releases by the end of the 2021–22 season: Warner Bros. stopped simultaneous releases by having ''Elvis'' as a theatrical exclusive, while Disney did the same, having done some only-in-theaters releases after the success of ''Shang-Chi'', although this had been restricted to MCU films beforehand.

The post-pandemic environment, thus fully set in place halfway through the 2021–22 season, soon showed audiences went to the movies mostly seeking thrills, squarely favoring action-adventure films as well as movies featuring cultural juggernauts, as demonstrated by the success of ''Top Gun: Maverick'' (which cemented Paramount's return to form after a decade-long AudienceAlienatingEra), ''Elvis'', ''Everything Everywhere All at Once'', ''Jurassic World: Dominion'', ''Minions: The Rise of Gru'', ''WesternAnimation/TheSuperMarioBrosMovie'', ''Film/{{Barbie}}'', ''Film/{{Wonka}}'', and most notably ''Avatar: The Way of Water'', which obliterated all known box-office records in a matter of weeks, and also its competition. However, most attempts at counter-programming were met with indifference as ''Film/TheGreenKnight'', ''Film/TheLastDuel'', ''Film/NightmareAlley2021'', ''Film/WestSideStory2021'' went to show, and even highly-anticipated films such as ''Film/TheMatrixResurrections'', ''The King's Man'', ''Amsterdam'', ''The Fabelmans'', ''Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody'' and ''Babylon'' failed to click in this new theatrical climate. (A key exception was 2023's ''Film/{{Oppenheimer}}'', thanks in part to an unconventional social media trend called "Barbenheimer" -- due to it opening the same day as the ''Barbie'' film, jokes about how there was seemingly little overlap between them blossomed into many people checking ''both'' films out.)

And not all cultural juggernauts are created equal: 2023 saw a number of long-profitable franchises besides superheroes significantly underperform, with the latest ''Mission: Impossible'' and ''Indiana Jones'' films losing tens if not hundreds of millions, while the ''Star Wars'' franchise remained in limbo on the big screen in favor of direct-to-streaming series. Many animated films -- ''Lightyear'', ''Lyle, Lyle Crocodile'', ''Strange World'', ''WesternAnimation/{{Elemental|2023}}'', ''WesternAnimation/RubyGillmanTeenageKraken'', and ''WesternAnimation/{{Wish}}'' (Disney's centennial animated feature) among them -- underperformed at the box-office if not downright bombed, likely an effect of families opting to wait for these to hit streaming instead of taking the kids to the movies. Notably, the only 2023 animated features that were definitively profitable were ''WesternAnimation/TheSuperMarioBrosMovie'' and ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManAcrossTheSpiderVerse'', both franchise-derived. On the other hand, horror and suspense pictures are trendy again with films like ''Orphan: First Kill'', ''Smile'', ''Terrifier 2'', ''The Menu'', ''[=M3GAN=]'', and ''Film/FiveNightsAtFreddys'' becoming hits in no small part because of innovative viral campaigns, cheeky twists on black comedy in most cases, and reasonable budgets.

But one source, carrying all these attributes, would prove by far, the most popular to be translated to the screen: superhero comic books, something that actually came off as a surprise at the beginning, considering that it had been confined to low-budget fare for decades, except for WB's attempts to cash on its newly-acquired Creator/DCComics properties in TheEighties (''Franchise/{{Superman}}'') and TheNineties (''Franchise/{{Batman}}''), [[{{Sequelitis}} with both attempts eventually crashing]]. Then, 2000's ''Film/XMen1'' (released by Creator/TwentiethCenturyFox) became a surprise hit (following on the footsteps of 1998's ''Film/{{Blade}}'' by Creator/NewLineCinema) and Creator/SamRaimi's 2002 film ''Film/SpiderMan1'' (released by Creator/ColumbiaPictures) turned out to be an unprecedented success that set the trend for more superhero films: Creator/{{Universal|Pictures}} attempted to turn ''Film/{{Hulk}}'' into a franchise to no avail, while [[Creator/TwentiethCenturyFox Fox]] had mediocre results with ''Film/FantasticFour2005'' and Warners decided to give their DC characters another chance, but they would only have success with Creator/ChristopherNolan's ''[[Film/TheDarkKnightTrilogy Dark Knight]]'' [[Film/TheDarkKnightTrilogy trilogy]]. With time, Marvel decided to get a larger piece of the cake and started their own film studio, 2008's ''Film/IronMan1'' kick-started the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse ([[CareerResurrection and revived]] Creator/RobertDowneyJr's career). By the time ''Film/{{The Avengers|2012}}'' was released in 2012, the MCU became a major player in Hollywood, also helped by Disney's acquisition of the publisher in 2009. By the mid-2010s, Creator/WarnerBros launched the Franchise/DCExtendedUniverse, which has also been commercially successful (although not to the extent of Marvel) although it would be generally mauled by critics until ''Film/WonderWoman2017'', with ''Aquaman'', ''Shazam'' and ''Joker'' establishing the DCEU as a more serious alternative to the MCU (although there is debate about the latter being either part of the franchise or a stand-alone drama loosely adapted from a comic book character).

The major positive effect of home video was that it provided a channel for young film geeks who had spent much of their lives watching old films on TV and video, picking up the various techniques used by classic directors, and deciding that they wanted to become filmmakers themselves. People like Creator/QuentinTarantino, Creator/KevinSmith, Creator/SpikeLee and Creator/StevenSoderbergh made such films as ''Film/ReservoirDogs'', ''Film/PulpFiction'', ''Film/{{Clerks}}'', ''Film/DoTheRightThing'' and ''Film/SexLiesAndVideotape'', sparking a renaissance in independent film that lasts to this day. Other directors, such as Creator/TheCoenBrothers, worked with both independent and major studios interchangeably. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the big studios started their own subsidiary labels devoted to independent films such as Creator/FoxSearchlightPictures, [[Creator/{{Sony}} Sony Pictures Classics]], Creator/{{Universal}}'s Creator/FocusFeatures and (prior to 2008) [[Creator/{{Paramount}} Paramount Vantage]], in order to farm Hollywood's [[OscarBait award-season arsenal]], winning critical acclaim and, sometimes, commercial success. In addition, many independent studios, such as Creator/Lionsgate, Creator/{{Annapurna|Pictures}}, {{Creator/STX|Entertainment}} and Magnolia (as well as the now-defunct Creator/{{PolyGram|FilmedEntertainment}}, Creator/{{Miramax|Films}}, Creator/TheWeinsteinCompany, Creator/FilmDistrict, Creator/{{New Line|Cinema}} and Creator/{{Summit|Entertainment}}), have gained footholds in the mainstream market by both distributing independent and foreign films and, increasingly, making films in-house (Lionsgate's ''Franchise/{{Saw}}'' franchise, Summit's ''[[Literature/TheTwilightSaga Twilight]]'' adaptations), often raking in enough money to blur the line between "indie" and "major". At the same time, the "Indie wave" not only rehabilitated the names of the New Hollywood-era auteurs which had spent the 1980s dealing with financial failures and critical indifference, but in many cases drove them to a degree of mainstream recognition they never expected.

2023 also had a bad omen for Hollywood's struggle to fully recover from the pandemic with not one, but two major union strikes: [[UsefulNotes/TVStrikes first one by the WGA, then one by SAG-AFTRA]] that delayed the production of numerous films and also compromised promotional campaigns for those about to be released in the case of the latter strike (as actors could not promote their films publicly). Many intended "tentpole" releases for 2024 were pushed back to 2025 due to the dual strikes, leaving audiences and exhibitors appalled at a lack of potential blockbusters. For instance, once-dominant Disney (which went from having seven of the worldwide top ten grossers of 2019 to only two in 2023) only offered ''Inside Out 2'', ''Film/DeadpoolAndWolverine'', ''Mufasa: The Lion King'', and ''WesternAnimation/{{Moana}} 2'' (the last hastily reedited from an in-production streaming series) for theaters in 2024, not counting a few films made under their Fox/Searchlight shingles.

This has meant a shift on the animation industry, the irreverent humor of films like the ''Franchise/DespicableMe'' saga and ''WesternAnimation/TheLEGOMovie'' put Universal and Warner Bros. on the map as prominent makers of animated movies. In addition, Disney's in-house feature animation studio regained pulse with the enormous success of films like ''WesternAnimation/WreckItRalph'', ''WesternAnimation/Frozen2013'' and ''WesternAnimation/{{Zootopia}}''. Meanwhile, the already-established Creator/{{Pixar}} and Creator/DreamWorksAnimation faced numerous problems: "The House Woody and Buzz Built" faced its first critical failure with 2011's ''WesternAnimation/Cars2'' [[ToughActToFollow after the magnum opus that was]] ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory3'', released the previous year, and would not redeem itself until the release of ''WesternAnimation/InsideOut'' in 2015. They would however face their first domestic BoxOfficeBomb with ''WesternAnimation/TheGoodDinosaur'' that Winter, not returning to top form until 2017 with ''WesternAnimation/{{Coco}}'', which kicked off a renaissance of sorts for the studio. That same year, DWA released ''WesternAnimation/Home2015'', which ended a parade of flops which coincided with the studio's shift in tone towards more character-based stories following 2010's ''WesternAnimation/HowToTrainYourDragon''. The studio behind ''Shrek'' and ''Madagascar'' was absorbed by Comcast in 2016, becoming Illumination's "second unit".

The current Blockbuster Age of Hollywood is an era where marketing and spectacle have dominated, in contrast to the creative freedom (and excesses) that marked the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood era of the 1970s. It has also created a new "studio-system", built upon the ashes of the old. This time however, there are only five major studios: Creator/{{Sony}} (releasing films under the Creator/ColumbiaPictures, Creator/TriStarPictures and Creator/ScreenGems imprints), [[Creator/{{Universal}} Universal Pictures]], Creator/WarnerBros, [[Creator/{{Paramount}} Paramount Pictures]] and [[Creator/{{Disney}} Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures]] (formerly known as Buena Vista Pictures)--Creator/TwentiethCenturyFox and Creator/{{MGM}} still exist, but the former was acquired by Disney in 2019, renamed [[RenamedToAvoidAssociation "20th Century Studios"]] to remove connections to Fox Corporation (the shell of Fox's former self) and the latter is a shadow of its former self, owned by its creditors for years until Amazon bought it in 2021, and a major studio [[GrandfatherClause only by virtue of]] its [[GloryDays glamorous past]]; on the other hand, mini-major Creator/{{Lionsgate}}, founded in 1997, has proven itself able to compete with the major players. But fundamentally, this is a studio-system InNameOnly. The studios have become part of larger conglomerates instead of being independent companies like in the Golden Age. In addition, actors still operate on a "free agent" basis instead of being contractually tied to a studio, and the New Hollywood mentality of directors having just as much say in the final product as studio executives-- if not more so-- remained (mostly) intact for much of the era.

There is significant overlap between the end of UsefulNotes/NewHollywood and the start of the Blockbuster Age. While New Hollywood is generally held to have ended in the early '80s after a string of expensive, high-profile flops, the beginning of the Blockbuster Age is generally pinned much earlier, in the year of 1975, which marked the arrival of one Creator/StevenSpielberg into mainstream Hollywood, with his classic shark film ''Film/{{Jaws}}''. ''Jaws'' was a revolution in cinema, marking a shift towards advertising, HighConcept and disciplined production as ways of producing high-quality, commercially viable films. This was followed up two years later by the success of Spielberg's ''Film/CloseEncountersOfTheThirdKind'' and Creator/GeorgeLucas' ''Franchise/StarWars'' (later retitled ''Franchise/StarWars Episode IV: Film/ANewHope''), which revitalized the science fiction genre. ''Star Wars'' also showed Hollywood how [[MerchandiseDriven merchandising]], {{spinoff}}s into other media, and sequels could be used by the studios to return to profitability. Together, ''Jaws'', ''Close Encounters'' and ''Star Wars'' invented the SummerBlockbuster as Hollywood's new paradigm for film-making.

Notable is the fact that these science-fiction thrillers were in genres that in the Old Hollywood days would be BMovie (and ''Star Wars'' was called such by ''Creator/RogerCorman'' during a visit to the set on hearing Creator/GeorgeLucas' ideas) and would have been made on low-budget or NoBudget with limited technical resources. The above films more or less structured on similar concepts with a much higher production standard and better visual effects. This trend continued with the wild success of ''Film/SupermanTheMovie'' in 1978 and ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'' in 1979, which showed that adaptations from media previously scoffed at by Hollywood, such as the ComicBook SuperHero and genre TV series, had potential to become big-time film genres and that the supposedly niche teenager, geek and nerd concepts could in fact appeal to a big part of the mainstream. The huge success of these films -- and another '79 entry, ''Film/TheMuppetMovie'' -- with children was also noted. For all its rebelliousness, UsefulNotes/NewHollywood fundamentally was built on the old genres of the Golden Age Hollywood (TheMusical, the ScrewballComedy, TheWestern, FilmNoir, the women's film, the EpicMovie) and either made {{Deconstruction}} of those genres, [[DeconReconSwitch or updated or reconfigured it]]. What Lucas and Spielberg achieved was a PerspectiveFlip whereby the disreputable serials, science-fiction and adventure stories suddenly went from micro-budget BMovie to more or less epic spectacular made on a scale and budget comparable to a Creator/CecilBDeMille production. This realignment of the audience kicked off the Blockbuster Age.

The name "Blockbuster Age" also has another origin: Blockbuster Video. It is very difficult to overstate how great an impact the invention of [[UsefulNotes/{{VCR}} the videocassette]] had on the film industry. It started a golden age for independent cinema, the full impact of which is described below. (It also started a golden age for the porn industry, but that's for [[TheRuleOfFirstAdopters a completely different article]].) It also effectively killed second-run theaters, grindhouses, and porn theaters, as people could now watch movies in the comfort of their living rooms instead of having to go to sleazy, run-down theaters in ''[[WretchedHive that]]'' [[WretchedHive part of town]] -- and in the case of porn theaters, not worry about getting caught at an establishment that was only one step above a brothel or a bathhouse. In addition, UsefulNotes/{{home video|distributors}} and cable television offered the studios additional revenue streams for their films after they'd left theaters, allowing them to continue making money off of older films -- some of which could see [[VindicatedByCable a second chance]] [[CultClassic at success]] when they came out on video or on a movie channel. Last but certainly not least, the videocassette seriously spooked Hollywood's traditional arch-enemy, the over-the-air television industry, which feared people recording shows just to fast-forward through all those lucrative commercials.

Of course, there's a catch to everything. Video camcorders also opened the doors to bootleggers, the pre-internet manifestation of {{digital pira|cyIsEvil}}tes, who hawked their wares on the street and packed everything up in seconds the moment they saw a cop. In the early '80s, the film industry, having not yet learned what a potential gold mine it was, feared that the videocassette would destroy them; MPAA head Jack Valenti [[WesternAnimation/{{Freakazoid}} (and his cheeks)]] went so far as to compare the effect it would have on cinema to the effect of the Boston Strangler on a woman alone at home. ([[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything Any similarities to the hysterical reaction of the MPAA to file-sharing are completely coincidental.]]) Persuaded by calmer voices like Creator/FredRogers, the Supreme Court's decision in the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc "Betamax case"]] in 1983-84, which held that the makers of UsefulNotes/{{VCR}}s couldn't be held liable for copyright infringement committed by the devices' users, ultimately settled the matter, with the film industry getting in on the booming home video industry not long after.

When the UsefulNotes/LaserDisc appeared in the 80s and, more importantly, UsefulNotes/{{DVD}}s came around in TheNineties, the studios were able to make even more money by putting out a [[LimitedSpecialCollectorsUltimateEdition Limited Special Collectors Ultimate]] UnratedEdition for each of their big films, packed with [[DVDCommentary commentaries]], deleted scenes and "director's cuts", "making of" featurettes, {{feelies}}, and other [[DVDBonusContent bonus features]]. The high-end [[Creator/TheCriterionCollection Criterion Collection]] series emerged as taking the greatest care in preservation and supplementation of classic films.

Another factor in the return of Hollywood to profitability was the rise of the multiplex theater, something that began during the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood era [[note]]although, depending on your definition, the first multiplex opened as early as the 1930s[[/note]] but truly took off in the [[UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan Reagan]] years and after. The multiplex follows a fairly simple logic: if you have more screens, then you can run more showings of more movies, and can therefore make [[MoneyDearBoy more money]]! Six-screen theaters were opening by the end of TheSeventies, and by TheNineties, they had gone up to eleven with 20-screen "megaplex" theaters and beyond. It is no coincidence that the rise of the multiplex occurred at the same time as the boom of malls and big-box stores; most multiplexes were part of such complexes, and like their retail cousins, were a driving force behind [[{{Suburbia}} suburban sprawl]] through TheEighties and the early years of TheNineties, the decade when downtown theaters slowly got squeezed out of business, unable to compete with the massive profits made by this new breed of theater. Multiplexes caused the moviegoing experience to undergo a fundamental shift, and very few would argue that the shift was for the better -- it went from large, well-appointed theaters with well-dressed, butler-like staff (something that is now seen only in the few remaining "legacy" movie palaces, like the [[Creator/EastmanKodak Kodak]] and Chinese Theatres in Hollywood) to small, fairly spartan auditoriums with floors covered in dropped popcorn and spilled soda (both of which are ridiculously overpriced), staffed by young people making minimum wage and not particularly happy about it -- movie theater jobs are often considered to be just a step above [[BurgerFool fast food]] and supermarket jobs in terms of crappy, humiliating employment for teenagers.

There are many waves and stretches for the Blockbuster era. The first wave is 1982 which saw the release of a slew of summer blockbusters that are now regarded as classics, including: ''Film/ETTheExtraTerrestrial'', ''Film/TheThing1982'', ''Film/RockyIII'', ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan'', ''Film/ConanTheBarbarian1982'', ''Film/BladeRunner'', ''Film/{{Poltergeist|1982}}'', ''Film/{{TRON}}'', and ''Film/TheRoadWarrior'' with the caveat that ''Blade Runner'', ''TRON'' and ''The Thing'' were flops. 1982 is often regarded as Hollywood's second "golden year" in terms of creativity and classic films, not unlike how 1939 is considered to be the highpoint of UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfHollywood. Other memorable films released around this time include ''Film/{{Ghostbusters 1984}}'', ''Film/RaidersOfTheLostArk'', ''Film/BackToTheFuture1'', and the first film to be released with the new PG-13 rating, ''Film/RedDawn1984''. However, unlike 1939, 1982 most certainly did ''not'' come at a high point for the studios financially. Hollywood spent much of TheEighties reeling from the fallout of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood era, and the combined share of the six surviving major studios from the [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfHollywood Golden Age]] had fallen to just 64% by 1986 -- the lowest it had been since the days of silent film. Two young studios -- Orion and Tri-Star (the former was a company formed by executives of United Artists who'd fled that company shortly before the ''Heaven's Gate'' debacle; the latter was initially a joint venture of Columbia, Creator/{{CBS}} and Creator/{{HBO}}) -- maintained about 6% market share each, Disney had about 10%, and smaller independents (the largest being Creator/NewLineCinema, "the house that [[Franchise/ANightmareOnElmStreet Freddy]] built") would together make up 13% (more than any one studio besides Paramount).

The faltering animation industry got a badly-needed kick in the pants at the end of the 1980s with the releases of ''Film/WhoFramedRogerRabbit'', ''WesternAnimation/TheLittleMermaid1989'' and ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast''. The "Disney Renaissance" became one of the main factors of [[UsefulNotes/TheRenaissanceAgeOfAnimation a new age for not only cartoons]], but also for the film industry as a whole as studios began to take interest in animation. However, the success of 1995's ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory1'' meant the end not only for the in-house animation divisions, replaced by up-starts like Creator/{{Dreamworks|Animation}} and Creator/{{Blue Sky|Studios}}, but also caused the decline of live-action family films.

After over a decade of mounting criticism from parents' associations and watchdog groups, the MPAA enacted more stringent measures that radically changed its ratings system: "PG-13" became both the most common rating for films and the highest-grossing one, replacing "PG" which soon gained the "G" rating's reputation of being a sign of "kiddie stuff", being now associated with animated films; indeed, Creator/RogerEbert wrote in 2010 that the two might as well be combined. By the second half of the 2010s, the number of G- and PG-rated films released per year ''combined'' was not more than twenty. 2016 marked the first year in which not a single non-documentary film was rated G, while in other years, this was mostly reserved for Pixar films. On the other hand, the number of R-rated films also decreased (many of the films receiving this rating primarily, if not only, for language) while the NC-17 rating, never able to shake off its being a successor to the "X" rating, pretty much fell into disuse, with films that would have received the rating choosing to go unrated. All of the above, combined with the [=#MeToo=] movement (where actresses and other women in Hollywood came forward about their sexual harassment experiences) resulted in sexual content and nudity in particular almost completely disappearing from films receiving wide distribution, even most R-rated films. [[https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20211029-why-hollywood-is-shunning-sex Many film critics and journalists]] have noted that this created an almost paradoxical pop-culture landscape, where film is becoming the [[TamerandChaster tamest and most chaste]] it has been since the days of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode, while streaming and premium cable shows and movies are pushing the boundaries of nudity and sex on screen to levels previously considered unthinkable (MaleFrontalNudity especially is a rarity in theatrical releases because of the MPAA, but is now near-ubiquitous in streaming releases).

Meanwhile, other film companies have announced similar distribution moves for their own films such as Disney with the online release of ''Film/ArtemisFowl'', while Warner Brothers did the same with the latest ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo'' film, ''WesternAnimation/{{Scoob}}''. In May, the trend took on a new intensity when the major war drama, ''Film/{{Greyhound}}'', starring the beloved two-time Oscar winner, Creator/TomHanks, was acquired by Creator/AppleTVPlus to be available on their service after its theatrical release date was twice delayed due to the pandemic. Paramount followed suit with ''WesternAnimation/TheSpongeBobMovieSpongeOnTheRun'', with Viacom divvying the streaming rights between Netflix and their Creator/ParamountPlus streaming service. Despite the belief that a release of this kind could never be financially viable for an expensive tentpole, Disney further added to this by announcing that the long-awaited and delayed ''Film/Mulan2020'' would be made available as VOD at an additional charge to Creator/DisneyPlus members. A number of other big-budget, high-profile films followed the day and date release near the end of 2020 such as ''WesternAnimation/{{Soul}}'' for Creator/DisneyPlus and ''Film/WonderWoman1984'' and it continued for the first half of 2021. In fact, this trend has become so prominent with the prevailing public health necessity that the UsefulNotes/AcademyAward rules have officially waived its theatrical presentation rules for the 2021 awards, allowing potentially all streaming films to be eligible.

2023 also had a bad omen for Hollywood's struggle to fully recover from the pandemic with not one, but two major union strikes: [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/TVStrikes first one by the WGA, then one by SAG-AFTRA]] that delayed the production of numerous films and also compromised promotional campaigns for those about to be released in the case of the latter strike (as actors could not promote their films publicly). Many intended "tentpole" releases for 2024 were pushed back to 2025 due to the dual strikes, leaving audiences and exhibitors appalled at a lack of potential blockbusters. For instance, once-dominant Disney (which went from having seven of the worldwide top ten grossers of 2019 to only two in 2023) only offered ''Inside Out 2'', ''Film/DeadpoolAndWolverine'', ''Mufasa: The Lion King'', and ''WesternAnimation/{{Moana}} 2'' (the last hastily reedited from an in-production streaming series) for theaters in 2024, not counting a few films made under their Fox/Searchlight shingles.

While in the early 2010s, it was expected for the movie exhibition industry to wither and die in a few years' time as mentioned above, the second half of the decade saw box-office numbers swell to unknown heights (conversely, cable television was rapidly being reduced in the late 2010s to a seldom-consumed media that most people only use nowadays as background noise thanks to the concurrent rise of streaming services, leading many to comment on the irony of the seemingly obsolete movie theater outliving the very medium that was supposed to succeed it). By the end of the decade, however, HypeBacklash set on, with filmmaker Martin Scorcese questioning the artistic value of modern commercial film, joining critiques for the perceived lack of mature themes and omnipresence of franchise movies. While 2019 saw ''Film/AvengersEndgame'' beating ''Avatar'' as the highest-grossing film of all time, it also saw sure bets for success get underwhelming returns (''Star Wars: Film/TheRiseOfSkywalker'') or become downright failures (''Film/{{Cats}}'') while "genre" films became unlikely successes, like ''Film/OnceUponATimeInHollywood'', ''Film/FordVFerrari'', ''Film/KnivesOut'' and ''Film/Joker2019''. This trend continued in early 2020 with ''Film/BadBoysForLife'' making gains while ''Film/BirdsOfPrey2020'' barely earned its budget back. Furthermore, the attention given to films made by streaming services, such as Netflix's ''The Irishman'' and ''Film/MarriageStory'' or released through such platforms in most countries did not help theatrical movies regarding their quality. "Prestige" productions and the names associated with them were also tarnished by the downfall of Harvey Weinstein, who was indicted on charges of sexual assault, as he pretty much monopolized the "genre film" market as "majors" began to give up on them from the second half of the 1990s to the early 2010s.

2023 also had a bad omen for Hollywood's struggle to fully recover from the pandemic with not one, but two major union strikes: [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/TVStrikes first one by the WGA, then one by SAG-AFTRA]] that delayed the production of numerous films and also compromised promotional campaigns for those about to be released in the case of the latter strike (as actors could not promote their films publicly). Many intended "tentpole" releases for 2024 were pushed back to 2025 due to the dual strikes (once-dominant Disney only offering ''Inside Out 2'', ''Deadpool 3'', and ''Mufasa: The Lion King'' for '24 as a result, not counting a few films made under the Fox/Searchlight shingles), leaving audiences and exhibitors appalled at a lack of potential blockbusters.

The current Blockbuster Age of Hollywood is an era where marketing and spectacle have dominated, in contrast to the creative freedom (and excesses) that marked the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood era of the 1970s. It has also created a new "studio-system", built upon the ashes of the old. This time however, there are only five major studios: Creator/{{Sony}} (releasing films under the Creator/ColumbiaPictures, Creator/TriStarPictures and Creator/ScreenGems imprints), [[Creator/{{Universal}} Universal Pictures]], Creator/WarnerBros, [[Creator/{{Paramount}} Paramount Pictures]] and [[Creator/{{Disney}} Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures]] (formerly known as Buena Vista Pictures)--Creator/TwentiethCenturyFox and Creator/{{MGM}} still exist, but the former was acquired by Disney in 2019, renamed [[InNameOnly "20th Century Studios"]] to remove connections to Fox Corporation (the shell of Fox's former self) and the latter is a shadow of its former self, owned by its creditors for years until Amazon bought it in 2021, and a major studio [[GrandfatherClause only by virtue of]] its [[GloryDays glamorous past]]; on the other hand, mini-major Creator/{{Lionsgate}}, founded in 1997, has proven itself able to compete with the major players. But fundamentally, this is a studio-system InNameOnly. The studios have become part of larger conglomerates instead of being independent companies like in the Golden Age. In addition, actors still operate on a "free agent" basis instead of being contractually tied to a studio, and the New Hollywood mentality of directors having just as much say in the final product as studio executives-- if not more so-- remained (mostly) intact for much of the era.

And not all cultural juggernauts are created equal: 2023 saw a number of long-profitable franchises besides superheroes significantly underperform, with the latest ''Mission: Impossible'' and ''Indiana Jones'' films losing tens if not hundreds of millions, while the ''Star Wars'' franchise remained in limbo on the big screen in favor of direct-to-streaming series. Many animated films -- ''Lightyear'', ''Lyle, Lyle Crocodile'', ''Strange World'', ''WesternAnimation/{{Elemental}}'', ''WesternAnimation/RubyGillmanTeenageKraken'', and ''WesternAnimation/{{Wish}}'' (Disney's centennial animated feature) among them -- underperformed at the box-office if not downright bombed, likely an effect of families opting to wait for these to hit streaming instead of taking the kids to the movies. Notably, the only 2023 animated features that were definitively profitable were ''WesternAnimation/TheSuperMarioBrosMovie'' and ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManAcrossTheSpiderVerse'', both franchise-derived. On the other hand, horror and suspense pictures are trendy again with films like ''Orphan: First Kill'', ''Smile'', ''Terrifier 2'', ''The Menu'', ''[=M3GAN=]'', and ''Film/FiveNightsAtFreddys'' becoming hits in no small part because of innovative viral campaigns, cheeky twists on black comedy in most cases, and reasonable budgets.

Superhero films kept their previous stranglehold on the box office at first, with ''Film/VenomLetThereBeCarnage'', ''Film/ShangChiAndTheLegendOfTheTenRings'' and ''Film/SpiderManNoWayHome'' easily becoming successes, ''No Way Home'' managing to be the first movie in two years to break a billion dollars worldwide, followed by ''Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness'' and later on, ''Wakanda Forever''. However, the genre faced severe difficulties over 2022–23. First, ''Thor: Love and Thunder'' garnered mixed reviews and was a box-office disappointment (at least by the MCU's standards) while the DCEU became engulfed in various controversies, particularly regarding WB's shaky finances and Discovery's drastic measures to turn the studio around, including the erasing of ''Batgirl'' for tax purposes. Furthermore, ''Black Adam'' was thrashed by critics and floundered financially, leading to a war of words between Dwayne Johnson and DC Studios over how much the film made and thrusting WB into a slump just as Paramount was recovering from theirs. Late in 2022, James Gunn was appointed head of DC-related projects going forward...but his confirmation that the 2023 slate of DCEU films (''Shazam! Fury of the Gods'', ''The Flash'', ''Blue Beetle'', and ''Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom'') would be the last in that particular continuity contributed to the disastrous box office performances of all four films. Marvel's 2023 film slate had only one success story with ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxyVol3'', with ''Film/TheMarvels'' doing so poorly that Disney stopped reporting on its box office take just a month into its run, while future plans were compromised by the intended BigBad of the MCU's current and next phases, Kang the Conqueror, being played by an actor (Creator/JonathanMajors) whom Disney was compelled to fire after he was convicted of domestic abuse.

Superhero films kept their previous stranglehold on the box office at first, with ''Film/VenomLetThereBeCarnage'', ''Film/ShangChiAndTheLegendOfTheTenRings'' and ''Film/SpiderManNoWayHome'' easily becoming successes, ''No Way Home'' managing to be the first movie in two years to break a billion dollars worldwide, followed by ''Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness'' and later on, ''Wakanda Forever''. However, the genre faced severe difficulties over 2022–23. First, ''Thor: Love and Thunder'' garnered mixed reviews and was a box-office disappointment (at least by the MCU's standards) while the DCEU became engulfed in various controversies, particularly regarding WB's shaky finances and Discovery's drastic measures to turn the studio around, including the erasing of ''Batgirl'' for tax purposes. Furthermore, ''Black Adam'' was thrashed by critics and floundered financially, leading to a war of words between Dwayne Johnson and DC Studios over how much the film made and thrusting WB into a slump just as Paramount was recovering from theirs. Late in 2022, James Gunn was appointed head of DC-related projects going forward...but his confirmation that the 2023 slate of DCEU films (''The Flash'', ''Blue Beetle'', and ''Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom'') would be the last in that particular continuity contributed to the disastrous box office performances of all three films. Marvel's 2023 film slate had only one success story with ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxyVol3'', with ''Film/TheMarvels'' doing so poorly that Disney stopped reporting on its box office take just a month into its run, while future plans were compromised by the intended BigBad of the MCU's current and next phases, Kang the Conqueror, being played by an actor (Johnathan Majors) whom Disney was compelled to fire after he was convicted of domestic abuse.

The post-pandemic environment, thus fully set in place halfway through the 2021–22 season, soon showed audiences went to the movies mostly seeking thrills, squarely favoring action-adventure films as well as movies featuring cultural juggernauts, as demonstrated by the success of ''Top Gun: Maverick'' (which cemented Paramount’s return to form after a decade-long AudienceAlienatingEra), ''Elvis'', ''Everything Everywhere All at Once'', ''Jurassic World: Dominion'', ''Minions: The Rise of Gru'', ''WesternAnimation/TheSuperMarioBrosMovie'', ''Film/{{Barbie}}'', and most notably ''Avatar: The Way of Water'', which obliterated all known box-office records in a matter of weeks, and also its competition. However, most attempts at counter-programming were met with indifference as ''Film/TheGreenKnight'', ''Film/TheLastDuel'', ''Film/NightmareAlley2021'', ''Film/WestSideStory2021'', and even highly-anticipated films such as ''Film/TheMatrixResurrections'', ''The King's Man'', ''Amsterdam'', ''The Fabelmans'', ''Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody'' and ''Babylon'' have failed to click in this new theatrical climate. (A key exception was 2023's ''Film/{{Oppenheimer}}'', thanks in part to an unconventional social media trend called "Barbenheimer" -- due to it opening the same day as the ''Barbie'' film, jokes about how there was seemingly little overlap between them blossomed into many people checking ''both'' films out.)

But not all cultural juggernauts are created equal: 2023 saw a number of long-profitable franchises besides superheroes significantly underperform, with the latest ''Mission: Impossible'' and ''Indiana Jones'' films losing tens if not hundreds of millions, while the ''Star Wars'' franchise remained in limbo on the big screen in favor of direct-to-streaming series. And the current climate hasn't been kind to animated films either: ''Lightyear'', ''Lyle, Lyle Crocodile'', ''Strange World'', ''WesternAnimation/{{Elemental}}'', and ''WesternAnimation/{{Wish}}'' (Disney's centennial animated feature) underperformed at the box-office if not downright bombed, likely an effect of families opting to wait for these to hit streaming instead of taking the kids to the movies. Notably, the only 2023 animated features that were definitively profitable were ''WesternAnimation/TheSuperMarioBrosMovie'' and ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManAcrossTheSpiderVerse'', both franchise-derived. On the other hand, amid the apparent debacle for superhero films, horror and suspense pictures are trendy again with films like ''Orphan: First Kill'', ''Smile'', ''Terrifier 2'', ''The Menu'', ''[=M3GAN=]'', and ''Film/FiveNightsAtFreddys'' becoming hits in no small part because of innovative viral campaigns, their cheeky twists on black comedy in most cases, and reasonable budgets.

The post-pandemic environment, fully set in place halfway through the 2021–22 season, soon showed audiences went to the movies mostly seeking thrills, squarely favoring action-adventure films as well as movies featuring cultural juggernauts, as demonstrated by the success of ''Top Gun: Maverick'' (which cemented Paramount’s return to form after a decade-long AudienceAlienatingEra), ''Elvis'', ''Everything Everywhere All at Once'', ''Jurassic World: Dominion'', ''Minions: The Rise of Gru'', ''WesternAnimation/TheSuperMarioBrosMovie'', ''Film/{{Barbie}}'', and most notably ''Avatar: The Way of Water'', which obliterated all known box-office records in a matter of weeks, and also its competition. However, most attempts at counter-programming were met with indifference as ''Film/TheGreenKnight'', ''Film/TheLastDuel'', ''Film/NightmareAlley2021'', ''Film/WestSideStory2021'', and even highly-anticipated films such as ''Film/TheMatrixResurrections'', ''The King's Man'', ''Amsterdam'', ''The Fabelmans'', ''Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody'' and ''Babylon'' have failed to click in this new theatrical climate. (A key exception was 2023's ''Film/{{Oppenheimer}}'', thanks in part to an unconventional social media trend called "Barbenheimer" -- due to it opening the same day as the ''Barbie'' film, jokes about how there was seemingly little overlap between them blossomed into many people checking ''both'' films out.)

It hasn't been kind to animated films either as ''Lightyear'', ''Lyle, Lyle Crocodile'', ''Strange World'', ''WesternAnimation/{{Elemental}}'', and ''WesternAnimation/{{Wish}}'' (Disney's centennial animated feature) underperformed at the box-office if not downright bombed, likely an effect of families opting to wait for these to hit streaming instead of taking the kids to the movies. Notably, the only 2023 animated features that were definitively profitable were ''WesternAnimation/TheSuperMarioBrosMovie'' and ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManAcrossTheSpiderVerse'', both franchise-derived. On the other hand, amid the apparent debacle for superhero films, horror and suspense pictures are trendy again with films like ''Orphan: First Kill'', ''Smile'', ''Terrifier 2'', ''The Menu'', ''[=M3GAN=]'', and ''Film/FiveNightsAtFreddys'' becoming hits in no small part because of innovative viral campaigns, their cheeky twists on black comedy in most cases, and reasonable budgets.

Increasing opposition to the "day-and-date" releasing scheme soon came to a head when Tom Cruise insisted on keeping ''Top Gun: Maverick'' out of streaming as long as he could. The film's success soon convinced studios to return to exclusive theatrical releases by the end of the 2021–22 season: Warner Bros. stopped simultaneous releases by having ''Elvis'' as a theatrical exclusive, while Disney did the same, having done some only-in-theaters releases after the success of ''Shang-Chi'', although this had been restricted to MCU films beforehand.

Superhero films kept their previous stranglehold on the box office at first, with ''Film/VenomLetThereBeCarnage'', ''Film/ShangChiAndTheLegendOfTheTenRings'' and ''Film/SpiderManNoWayHome'' easily becoming successes, ''No Way Home'' managing to be the first movie in two years to break a billion dollars worldwide, followed by ''Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness'' and later on, ''Wakanda Forever''. However, the genre faced severe difficulties during the 2022–23 season as ''Thor: Love and Thunder'' garnered mixed reviews and was a box-office disappointment (at least by the MCU's standards) while the DCEU became engulfed in various controversies, particularly regarding WB's shaky finances and Discovery's drastic measures to turn the studio around, including the erasing of ''Batgirl'' for tax purposes. Furthermore, ''Black Adam'' was thrashed by critics and floundered financially, leading to a war of words between Dwayne Johnson and DC Studios over how much the film made and thrusting WB into a slump just as Paramount was recovering from theirs. Late in 2022, James Gunn was appointed head of the DCEU.

It hasn't been kind to animated films either as ''Lightyear'', ''Lyle, Lyle Crocodile'', ''Strange World'', ''WesternAnimation/{{Elemental}}'', and ''WesternAnimation/{{Wish}}'' (Disney's centennial animated feature) underperformed at the box-office if not downright bombed, likely an effect of families opting to wait for these to hit streaming instead of taking the kids to the movies. Notably, the only 2023 animated features that were definitively profitable were ''WesternAnimation/TheSuperMarioBrosMovie'' and ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManAcrossTheSpiderVerse'', both franchise-derived. On the other hand, amid the apparent debacle for superhero films, horror and suspense pictures are trendy again with films like ''Orphan: First Kill'', ''Smile'', ''Terrifier 2'', ''The Menu'' and ''[=M3GAN=]'' becoming hits in no small part because of innovative viral campaigns, their cheeky twists on black comedy in most cases, and reasonable budgets.

The post-pandemic environment, fully set in place halfway through the 2021–22 season, soon showed audiences went to the movies mostly seeking thrills, squarely favoring action-adventure films as well as movies featuring cultural juggernauts, as demonstrated by the success of ''Top Gun: Maverick'' (which cemented Paramount’s return to form after a decade-long AudienceAlienatingEra), ''Elvis'', ''Everything Everywhere All at Once'', ''Jurassic World: Dominion'', ''Minions: The Rise of Gru'', and most notably ''Avatar: The Way of Water'', which obliterated all known box-office records in a matter of weeks, and also its competition. However, any attempts at counter-programming were met with indifference as ''Film/TheGreenKnight'', ''Film/TheLastDuel'', ''Film/NightmareAlley2021'', ''Film/WestSideStory2021'', and even highly-anticipated films such as ''Film/TheMatrixResurrections'', ''The King's Man'', ''Amsterdam'', ''The Fabelmans'', ''Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody'' and ''Babylon'' have failed to click in this new theatrical climate, which hasn't been very kind to animated films either as ''Lightyear'', ''Lyle, Lyle Crocodile'' ''Strange World'', and underperformed at the box-office if not downright bombed, likely an effect of families opting to wait for these to hit streaming instead of taking the kids to the movies (with only Universal’s Illumination and [=DreamWorks=] being profitable in 2022). And amid the apparent debacle for superhero films, horror and suspense pictures seem to have become Hollywood's newest trend with films like ''Orphan: First Kill'', ''Smile'', ''Terrifier 2'', ''The Menu'' and ''[=M3GAN=]'' becoming hits in no small part because of innovative viral campaigns and their cheeky twists on black comedy in most cases.

* Creator/MichaelBay (''Film/Armageddon1998'', ''Film/{{Transformers}}'')

* Creator/RyanCoogler (''Film/{{Creed}}'', ''Film/{{Black Panther|2018}}'')

While in the early 2010s, it was expected for the movie exhibition industry to wither and die in a few years' time as mentioned above, the second half of the decade saw box-office numbers swell to unknown heights (conversely, cable television was rapidly being reduced in the late 2010s to a seldom-consumed media that most people only use nowadays as background noise thanks to the concurrent rise of streaming services, leading many to comment on the irony of the seemingly obsolete movie theater outliving the very medium that was supposed to succeed it). By the end of the decade, however, HypeBacklash set on, with filmmaker Martin Scorcese questioning the artistic value of modern commercial film, joining critiques for the perceived lack of mature themes and omnipresence of franchise movies. While 2019 saw ''Film/AvengersEndgame'' beating ''Avatar'' as the highest-grossing film of all time, it also saw sure bets for success get underwhelming returns (''Star Wars: Film/TheRiseOfSkywalker'') or become downright failures (''Film/{{Cats}}'') while "genre" films became unlikely successes, like ''Film/OnceUponATimeInHollywood'', ''Film/FordVFerrari'', ''Film/KnivesOut'' and ''Film/Joker2019''. This trend continued in early 2020 with ''Film/BadBoysForLife'' making gains while ''Film/BirdsOfPrey'' barely earned its budget back. Furthermore, the attention given to films made by streaming services, such as Netflix's ''The Irishman'' and ''Film/MarriageStory'' or released through such platforms in most countries did not help theatrical movies regarding their quality. "Prestige" productions and the names associated with them were also tarnished by the downfall of Harvey Weinstein, who was indicted on charges of sexual assault, as he pretty much monopolized the "genre film" market as "majors" began to give up on them from the second half of the 1990s to the early 2010s.

Speaking of Cannon, they were able to grow remarkably fast in a short period of time thanks to Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, the two Israelis who took over Cannon in the late 1970s, pioneering the "pre-buy" -- paying for movies to be made by selling the home video, TV, and foreign distribution rights to their films in advance, meaning the films were profitable even before theatrical release. Other companies, including arch-rival Creator/CarolcoPictures, copied the same formula, relying on foreign and ancillary rights to help fund films. Ultimately, both companies fell apart later amid constant financial mismanagement; both Cannon and Carolco, and well a slew of other B-level film companies, were being funded by the French bank Credit Lyonnais in what's been described as a "massive Ponzi-like scheme" where the bankers and studio higher-ups were busy bribing each other to insane levels; Cannon's perilous financial state [[https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1996/07/08/214344/ subsequently attracted the attention of]] Italian scammer Giancarlo Parretti, who purchased Cannon and then MGM/UA, the latter under false pretenses; merging the two together, [[TyrantTakesTheHelm he owned the company for a tumultuous eight months]], leaving a trail of chaos in his wake, until CL seized control and had Parretti arrested in 1992. Most of the other companies entangled with CL had already gone under by that point; Carolco was the last company to fail, in 1995, which also resulted in a ''Franchise/SpiderMan'' film being [[ScrewedByTheLawyers webbed up in legal disputes]] until Columbia Pictures managed to untangle it via a deal with MGM, which itself spent much of the 1990s recovering from the Parretti fiasco and buying up other companies and libraries, including the bankrupt Creator/OrionPictures.

More importantly, it revived the fortunes of the Walt Disney Company, which declined after its founder's demise and during TheEighties saw a lot of defections and came close to becoming a theme park-based company with film-making as a side-business. Their first major step in keeping themselves relevant was to move into non-family films by establishing Creator/TouchstonePictures; previous attempts at more adult-aimed films like ''Film/{{TRON]]'' had flopped in large part [[AnimationAgeGhetto because of the family-friendly stigma the Disney name had at the time]]. Touchstone's creation bypassed this problem and soon enough they'd even established a second label in Creator/HollywoodPictures to continue creating mainstream films. By the mid-1990s, Disney became a major money-spinner with a huge slew of valuable properties; in the 2000s it acquired Creator/{{Pixar}}, ''Franchise/StarWars'' (via Lucasfilm) and Creator/MarvelComics, becoming far and away the biggest studio in Hollywood.

Speaking of Cannon, they were able to grow remarkably fact in a short period of time thanks to Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, the two Israelis who took over Cannon in the late 1970s, pioneering the "pre-buy" -- paying for movies to be made by selling the home video, TV, and foreign distribution rights to their films in advance, meaning the films were profitable even before theatrical release. Other companies, including arch-rival Creator/CarolcoPictures, copied the same formula, relying on foreign and ancillary rights to help fund films. Ultimately, both companies fell apart later amid constant financial mismanagement; both Cannon and Carolco, and well a slew of other B-level film companies, were being funded by the French bank Credit Lyonnais in what's been described as a "massive Ponzi-like scheme" where the bankers and studio higher-ups were busy bribing each other to insane levels; Cannon's perilious financial state subsequently attracted the attention of Italian scammer Giancarlo Parretti, who purchased Cannon and then MGM/UA, the latter under false pretenses; merging the two together, [[TyrantTakesTheHelm he owned the company for a tumultuous eight months]], leaving a trail of chaos in his wake, until CL seized control and had Parretti arrested in 1992. Most of the other companies entangled with CL had already gone under by that point; Carolco was the last company to fail, in 1995, which also resulted in a ''Franchise/SpiderMan'' film [[ScrewedByTheLawyers webbed up in legal disputes]] until Columbia Pictures managed to untangle it via a deal with MGM, which itself spent much of the 1990s recovering from the Parretti fiasco and buying up other companies and libraries, including the bankrupt Creator/OrionPictures.

More importantly, it revived the fortunes of the Walt Disney Company, which declined after its founder's demise and during TheEighties saw a lot of defections and came close to becoming a theme park-based company with film-making as a side-business. By the mid-1990s, Disney became a major money-spinner with a huge slew of valuable properties; in the 2000s it acquired Creator/{{Pixar}}, ''Franchise/StarWars'' (via Lucasfilm) and Creator/MarvelComics, becoming far and away the biggest studio in Hollywood.

The second half of the 2010s has seen a trend for greater consolidation with some controversial merger proposals: The first being AT&T's proposed acquisition of Time-Warner, which has been subject to congressional scrutiny. Meanwhile, Disney's takeover of Fox has given way to concerns about a potential near-monopoly of the industry as two of the largest media conglomerates amalgamated, even if both will keep their separate operations.

The major positive effect of home video was that it provided a channel for young film geeks who had spent much of their lives watching old films on TV and video, picking up the various techniques used by classic directors, and deciding that they wanted to become filmmakers themselves. People like Creator/QuentinTarantino, Creator/KevinSmith, Creator/SpikeLee and Creator/StevenSoderbergh made such films as ''Film/ReservoirDogs'', ''Film/PulpFiction'', ''Film/{{Clerks}}'', ''Film/DoTheRightThing'' and ''Film/SexLiesAndVideotape'', sparking a renaissance in independent film that lasts to this day. Other directors, such as Creator/TheCoenBrothers, worked with both independent and major studios interchangeably. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the big studios started their own subsidiary labels devoted to independent films such as Creator/FoxSearchlightPictures, [[Creator/{{Sony}} Sony Pictures Classics]], Creator/{{Universal}}'s Creator/FocusFeatures and (prior to 2008) [[Creator/{{Paramount}} Paramount Vantage]], in order to farm Hollywood's [[OscarBait award-season arsenal]], winning critical acclaim and, sometimes, commercial success. In addition, many independent studios, such as Creator/LionsGate, Creator/{{Annapurna|Pictures}}, {{Creator/STX|Entertainment}} and Magnolia (as well as the now-defunct Creator/{{PolyGram|FilmedEntertainment}}, Creator/{{Miramax|Films}}, Creator/TheWeinsteinCompany, Creator/FilmDistrict, Creator/{{New Line|Cinema}} and Creator/{{Summit|Entertainment}}), have gained footholds in the mainstream market by both distributing independent and foreign films and, increasingly, making films in-house (Lionsgate's ''Franchise/{{Saw}}'' franchise, Summit's ''[[Literature/TheTwilightSaga Twilight]]'' adaptations), often raking in enough money to blur the line between "indie" and "major". At the same time, the "Indie wave" not only rehabilitated the names of the New Hollywood-era auteurs which had spent the 1980s dealing with financial failures and critical indifference, but in many cases drove them to a degree of mainstream recognition they never expected.