Film Studios, buildings that house film production units, or the permanent companies that produce films. In the former sense, film studios date back to the beginning of cinema. The first film studio was built by the Edison Company in New Jersey, United States, in 1893, but the standard pattern for the next couple of decades was set by the studio Georges Méliès had built at the end of the 19th century for his film-making. This was derived from the standard design already used for professional stills photography. It resembled a gigantic greenhouse, with three walls and the roof made of sheets of glass. The fourth wall was solid, and the glass used for the walls and ceiling had a ripple, or prismatic, finish to diffuse the light. Muslin blinds could be rolled across under the ceiling and also over the transparent walls to further soften the sunlight on very bright days. Nearly all film production companies used similar studios to film interior scenes on constructed sets within them. After a few years, the diffused sunlight through the glass roof came to be supplemented with extra artificial light from arc lights and racks of mercury-vapour tube lights. This was done to enable film production to continue on very overcast days, and also to give better three-dimensional modelling to the figures of the actors.

During World War I the big American film companies began to black out their studios and to film completely under artificial light, as this gave greater control and uniformity in the lighting. Studios were also fitted with hanging galleries over the area where the sets were built, to give a convenient place for some of the extra lights now in use. The rest of the world followed these practices after a few years. With the coming of sound films, most studios were soundproofed to exclude external noise.

Within a film company, the shooting areas under cover, and the buildings housing them, are also referred to as “stages”. The open areas within a film company's grounds that are used for film production are called the “backlot”.

In the latter sense of “film studios”, the word “studio” is also used by transference to mean a permanent company that arranges a continuous production programme of films solely using its own production facilities, and also distributes these films exclusively to film exhibitors. From the 1920s through to the 1940s, this description was applied to the seven large American film companies—Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Warner Bros., Paramount, 20th Century-Fox, Universal, RKO, and Columbia—that had large numbers of actors, directors, and technicians under long-term contract making films in their own studios, and distributing them to chains of cinemas they owned in the United States and elsewhere. This “vertically integrated” system was broken down by American government action at the end of the 1940s, when companies owning chains of cinemas were separated from producing and distributing companies by law. However, Universal, Columbia, 20th Century-Fox, Disney, and Warner Bros. still distribute films, own studios, and produce some of the films made in these studios.

Similar studio complexes were established in other countries during the first half of the 20th century. One of the largest outside the United States was the UFA studios at Babelsberg near Berlin. In Britain numerous studios were set up in and around London, among them Pinewood, which became the headquarters of the Rank Organisation, the ambitious construction by Alexander Korda at Denham, and the small but highly influential Ealing Studios. Notable French studios included those at Vincennes and Billancourt, both on the outskirts of Paris, and the Victorine studios in Nice, while in Italy the huge Cinecittà complex was constructed near Rome under the auspices of Benito Mussolini. In Czechoslovakia the Barrandov studios in Prague were reckoned among the most modern and best equipped in Europe. The Soviet cinematic authority, Goskino (later Sovkino) controlled major production centres near Moscow and Kiev (now in Ukraine). In Japan film production concentrated around the cities of Tokyo and Kyoto, and the main studios were those of Nikkatsu (later Daiei), Toho, and Shochiku. The other chief production centre in Asia was Bombay (now Mumbai), home of Hindu-language cinema, where the countless—and often short-lived—studios were lumped together under the flippant collective name of “Bollywood”.

As in the United States, in most countries the centralized power and organization of the studios steadily diminished during the latter half of the 20th century. By the end of the century continuous production by a single company with full-time staff in a single studio, such as had been the norm in the Hollywood “studio era” of 1920-1950, had become the exception. In Britain, France, and almost everywhere outside the United States the studio complexes had devolved into production facilities, offering fully equipped, four-walled stages to be rented out to whichever production company needed them on an ad hoc basis. This trend began in the 1950s and 1960s, when small production companies started taking advantage of the independence and freedom from overheads gained by not running a permanent studio. (To some extent this had always happened—alone among the Hollywood majors, United Artists had never owned its own studio, but had rented space from the other majors when needed.)

In recent years, alongside the burgeoning power of stars and agents (often working in tandem), much of the most interesting American film work has come from the smaller outfits such as Orion, Lion’s Gate, Miramax, and DreamWorks SKG, generally producing independently but relying on the facilities and distribution muscle of the major studios. Some of these companies, such as Orion, have struggled to survive; others have sought safety by entering into a semi-autonomous alliance with one of the big players, the most prominent example being Miramax in its often troubled relationship with Disney. In some cases, independent film-makers have aspired to establish their own production facilities, mini-studios in their own right—occasionally with success, such as George Lucas with his Lucasfilm complex in northern California, but more often, like the example of Francis Coppola with American Zoetrope, ending in ignominious collapse. Similarly ambitious European ventures, like the British Goldcrest or the Anglo-French-Dutch combine PolyGram, have also proved disappointing. For the moment, the survivors of the old studio system remain the leading players in the game.