Cinema of the United States
filmmaking industry in the United States
The film industry of the United States, primarily associated with major film studios collectively referred to as "Hollywood", has significantly influenced the global film industry since the early 20th century.
Classical Hollywood cinema, a filmmaking style developed in the 1910s, continues to shape many American films today. While French filmmakers Auguste and Louis Lumière are often credited with modern cinema's origins, American filmmaking quickly rose to global dominance. As of 2024, the United States produced 544 national feature films, making it the world's fourth-largest film producer after India, Japan and China. Although the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand also produce English-language films, they are not directly part of the Hollywood system. Due to this global reach, Hollywood is frequently regarded as a transnational cinema with some films released in multiple language versions, such as Spanish and French.
Contemporary Hollywood frequently outsources production to countries including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The five major film studios—Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Walt Disney Studios, Sony Pictures—are media conglomerates that dominate American box office revenue and have produced some of the most commercially successful film and television programs worldwide. Adjusted for inflation, Gone with the Wind (1939) is the highest-grossing film of all time.
In 1894, the world's first commercial motion-picture exhibition was held in New York City using Thomas Edison's kinetoscope and kinetograph.
The public source identifies “Cinema of the United States” as filmmaking industry in the United States. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Cinema, United and States.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q380675. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2024, 1939 and 1894.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cinema of the United States” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.