Paramount Stops Releasing Major Movies on Film
Roll credits.
For more than a century, Hollywood has relied on 35-millimeter film to capture its fleeting images and deliver them to the silver screen. Now, in a historic move, Paramount Pictures has become the first big studio to stop releasing its major movies on film in the United States.
The studio’s Oscar-nominated film “The Wolf of Wall Street” is the studio’s first movie in wide release to be distributed entirely in digital format, according to theater industry executives briefed on the plans who were not authorized to speak publicly.
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Paramount recently notified theater owners that its Will Ferrell comedy “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues,” which opened in December, was the last movie released on 35-mm film, these people said. Previously, only small movies such as documentaries were released solely in digital format.
The decision is likely to encourage other studios to follow suit, accelerating a complete phase-out of film that could come by the end of the year.