![]() 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 Steven Spielberg into mainstream Hollywood, with his classic shark film Jaws. There is significant overlap between the end of New Hollywood and the start of the Blockbuster Age. The term "block buster" (note the space) was first used for a giant bomb during World War II, with Variety quickly adopting it to describe films whose premieres attracted lines around the blocks surrounding Broadway's top movie houses like the Radio City Music Hall or the Paramount, Strand, Capitol and Roxy theaters. "Blockbusters" in both senses of the word 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. The studios have become part of larger conglomerates instead of being independent companies like in the Golden Age. But fundamentally, this is a studio-system In Name Only. This time however, there are only five major studios: Sony (releasing films under the Columbia Pictures, TriStar Pictures and Screen Gems imprints), Universal Pictures, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures (formerly known as Buena Vista Pictures)- 20th Century Fox and MGM still exist, but the former was acquired by Disney in 2019, renamed "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 only by virtue of its glamorous past on the other hand, mini-major Lionsgate, founded in 1997, has proven itself able to compete with the major players. ![]() It has also created a new "studio-system", built upon the ashes of the old. 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 New Hollywood era of the 1970s. "A long time ago, in a studio boardroom far, far away."
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