At one time the term "movie studio" meant just that--a location where the company conducted its business, filmed its product, and performed the remainder of the tasks necessary to make a finished film. A studio may or may not also have had a distribution apparatus of its own, but it must have access to such an apparatus to get its films to the theaters. What a studio does not necessarily need today is the physical plant that once was so essential, for soundstage space can be rented and most films make use of real locales to a much greater extent and have little need of the back lot that used to be so important. The studio to be created here will require an office building of some size for the different departments, some of which can be housed in other buildings or even other parts of town when that is convenient. The studio lot, however, is not required. What differentiates the studio today from the simple production company is that the studio has a number of departments which handle the production of a film from beginning to end (including a marketing and publicity department) and divisions handling films, television, and other media to get the most out of the resources of the studio itself and its various productions. Studios today may be differentiated according to size. The large studios have a long history in Hollywood and include the so-called majors--Warner Bros., Twentieth-Century Fox, Walt Disney, Paramount Pictures, and Columbia Pictures. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and United Artists may belong in this company as well, but recent events have stripped them of much of their power and independence. The small studios today are production companies that have never had a history of owning a studio lot and include companies such as Miramax, New Line, Fine Line, and Castle Rock.
The studio system developed along with the early motion picture, and the meaning of "studio" changed as the industry developed. The development of th...