All that came to an end in 1948, when the Supreme Court ruled that the studios were illegally shutting out independent theater operators. In the four years after the landmark decision in U.S. v. Paramount, the studios signed consent decrees with the government agreeing to sell their theaters.
Now the movie industry's relationship with theaters is changing again, reverting, some say, to its old, anti-competitive ways.
With the blessing of the government, the studios are buying movie theaters again. Columbia Pictures broke the ice in 1985 by acquiring the Walter Reade theaters, a small, prestigious group of movie houses in New York City.
Other studios, wary lest a rival gain an edge, wasted little time in following suit. Since Columbia's initial foray back to the box office, production companies have acquired interests in roughly 14 percent of the 22,700 U.S. movie screens.
Gulf + Western, the parent of Paramount, has 475 screens. The owners of Cannon Group Inc., a smaller production company, have the 425-screen circuit of Commonwealth Theaters. MCA, the parent of Universal Pictures, bought a share of the 1,600-screen circuit of Cineplex Odeon Theaters, which, in turn, bought the Walter Reade theaters from Columbia.
Despite that sale, Columbia, which was merged in December with Tri-Star Pictures Inc., continues to expand its presence at the box office. The newly renamed Columbia Pictures Entertainment, a unit of Coca-Cola Co., now owns the powerful 310-screen Loews Theaters, based in Secaucus, N.J., and last month agreed to pay $165 million for the 325-screen USA Cinemas, based in Boston.
