by Conan Simmons – August 7, 2020 – 4:40pm
Paramount Consent Decrees overturned in long expected ruling.
Late last year the Department of Justice announced they were seeking to end the 70 year ban on movie studios owning theater chains and forcing theaters to block book their films. Block booking was the practice of basically saying “Oh, you want to show Star Wars? Then you have to show Twilight and Pluto Nash with it.”
The historic antitrust law came to effect in 1948 as a result of the Supreme Court ruling on the United States v. Paramount, et al. The law essentially opened the door for independent filmmakers to get their films shown in theaters, most notably the works of John Cassavetes and the Roger Corman films at American International.
The film industry has naturally evolved a lot since the mid-twentieth century. The rise of streaming in the last decade has rapidly decreased the importance of the aging law. The overturning will lift the ban on theater ownership by studios and, after another two years, ease restrictions on block booking. How that will ultimately change film exhibition is very hard to tell right now with the ongoing Covid-19 lockdowns and studios choosing to bypass theaters altogether in favor of their studio-owned streaming services.
It could be several decades before the film industry sees another antitrust law of that scale. Regardless, 2020 has become one of the most earth changing years for film rivaling all shifts in the industry prior.