The American film company Universal Pictures became the most profitable studio according to box office results in 2023. During the year, the studio released 24 films, including The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Oppenheimer and the horror film M3GAN. Learn more at los-angeles-trend.
FILM COMPANY IS THE LEADER IN CREATING FILMS FOR OVER 100 YEARS
The film studio was founded in 1912 by Carl Laemmle, the manager of an ordinary haberdashery store. Once, during a trip to Chicago, he saw cheap nickelodeon movie theaters, which charged five cents for admission. This impressed Carl and he realized that people preferred inexpensive theaters. Carl decides to leave the store and buys several humble theaters, as well as starts making films on his own. On April 30, 1912, the Universal factory appeared. This name he saw on a bus and used it for the future film studio.
Universal Pictures is the oldest still-existing film producer and distributor in the United States. Just as the company’s iconography remained unchanged, so did its physical presence in the landscape of Los Angeles. No other major Hollywood studio has been making films in the same location for as long as Universal.
UNIVERSAL ALLOWED PEOPLE TO WATCH FILM SHOOTINGS
The first Universal movies were shot at Oak Crest Ranch at the end of 1912. Oak Crest and the adjacent property were officially named Universal City. The studio offered bus tours from downtown Los Angeles to its grounds. When in 1915 the Universal tour officially opened, visitors were allowed to watch westerns, melodramas, comedies and crime dramas on four open-air sets.
Low-budget melodramas, westerns and serials aimed at provincial residents were filmed in pavilions that were less than one square kilometer in size. One of Laemmle’s innovations was the decision to write the real names of the actors in the credits, not pseudonyms as before.
Over time, the theater chain expanded and the number of film premieres increased. In 1928, Carl Laemmle Jr. began building pavilions at the studio for shooting sound motion pictures. In 1928, the famous character Mickey Mouse debuted on screen. In 1930, the movie All Quiet on the Western Front, produced by Laemmle Jr., was awarded an Oscar for Best Picture.
HORROR FILMS GAINED HUGE POPULARITY IN THE 1940s
Carl Jr. invented a new product, a series of horror films that supported the company during the Great Depression. The film Dracula, which was released in 1931, made a big splash and gave the studio producers confidence that they had found a formula for success and should make more movies about monsters. From the 1920s to the early 1940s, the Universal film company was very successful with audiences. People then especially liked monster movies: Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), The Wolf Man (1941). Universal was the best in this genre.
In the mid-1930s, Laemmle Jr. was about to create high-quality and big-budget films, but he could not repay the loans, and the company was sold. At the beginning of World War II, the studio returned to producing melodramas and cheap westerns.
THE UNIVERSAL FILM COMPANY WAS A PIONEER OF IMPORTANT CHANGES IN THE FILM INDUSTRY
In 1950, the president of the MCA company (Music Corporation of America), Lew Wasserman, signed a contract with the studio. Under this contract, instead of a fee, his client was to receive a share of the money made from films shot by Universal in which he participated. Since then, this form of payment for actors’ work has become a regular practice in the American and world cinema business.
Unlike other Hollywood companies that have had more stars than there are in the sky or animated characters, the image of Universal is controversial in the public imagination. This was partially intentional. Without its own chain of movie theaters or any first-run cinemas, the company supplied films to tens of thousands of independent theaters in the centeral country. Therefore, it needed a diverse list of movies to attract various but popular tastes.
Ironically, it was the low-budget genre production that brought Universal the prestige the company sought. Universal not only prospered in such genres as comedies, westerns or horrors but also made its mark in cinema history.
With the breakdown of the classic Hollywood system after the Paramount decree in 1948, which prohibited monopoly ownership in production, distribution and exhibition, Universal finally gained its rights. As the studio is made up of parts and is not a rigidly structured organization, it perfectly suited the new system of independent producers and freelance talent.
The highest-grossing film in the entire history of Universal Pictures was directed by Steven Spielberg. The movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial had an extremely low budget of $10.5 million but earned $793 million at the box office. The most expensive film was King Kong, directed by Peter Jackson in 2005. The studio spent $207 million on it and made only $550 million in return.
Steven Spielberg revitalized the studio with such hits as Jaws (1975), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and Jurassic Park (1993). By the way, some of these franchises played an important role for Universal for decades.
The main film franchises of the studio are Universal Classic Monsters, Jurassic Park, Despicable Me, Fast & Furious, Back to the Future and Jason Bourne.
The perfect matching of the design and iconography of the company’s logo in the past century was the first thing that struck the eye. The films belonged to a new era of planes, telephones and other modern technologies that erased geographical space even for ordinary citizens. This wide picture from space meant a lot. Over the next 100 years, the logo was gradually updated. A new color was added and the relief of the globe’s surface was changed.
UNIVERSAL STUDIOS HOLLYWOOD THEME PARK OPERATES IN LOS ANGELES
This place is considered the entertainment capital of Los Angeles. The park covers an area of about 150 hectares and welcomes over 6 million visitors annually. Besides shooting movies here, people also take tours, visit filming sets, have fun at themed attractions, experience the power of special effects and meet their favorite movie characters on the streets.
Park visitors can enjoy rides, take a studio tour or stroll around the area, attending several shows and popping into a few shops.
Visitors are given 3D glasses and go on a virtual walk on “Shrek 4-D,” “The Simpsons Ride” and “Despicable Me Minion Mayhem” attractions. To enhance the experience, visitors are sprayed with water, swayed in different directions, appropriate scents are released and more.
“Transformers: The Ride-3D” immerses visitors in the midst of Transformers battles. The giant robots are fighting, shaking everything around them. On the “Revenge of the Mummy: The Ride” attraction, you can find yourself in an ancient tomb where mummies unexpectedly pop out and scarabs crawl around your feet. In the Jurassic Park zone, visitors can ride an inflatable boat. Triceratops, pterodactyls and other unfriendly dinosaurs will be waiting in the surrounding jungle.
