Some economic aspects of the U.S. movie business have changed relatively little from 1929 to 2007.   The number of feature movie releases in both these years was about 700.  The total number of movie screens was 66% greater in 2007.  That’s less of a change than the 148% increase in U.S. population from 1929 to [...]

Movie theaters potentially can feature profitably more independent works in coming years.  U.S. major-studio films had an average negative cost (cost to production of final master) of $71 million per film in 2007.   U.S. major-studio affiliates and subsidiaries creating narrower-market films had average negative cost of $48 million per film.[1]  New digital tools allow independent [...]

AT&T deserves at least some credit for the invention of talkies.   The Warner Brothers purchased their pioneering Vitaphone sound movie technology from Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1925.   Earlier that year, Western Electric and AT&T had created Bell Telephone Laboratories as a jointly owned but separate entity.   The name Vitaphone highlights sound movies’ connection to the [...]

“Haven’t you been around the show world long enough to know that a talking picture is something to run away from?” Sam Warner declared early in 1925 to a radio engineering urging him to consider new talking picture technology for the Warner Brothers’ moving picture production and exhibition business.   His brother Harry added, “Who the [...]