Paramount Pictures

Paramount was one of the integrated Hollywood majors: it produced films, distributed them, and owned theaters. The Justice Department's case against that system took Paramount's name, which is why the 1948 orders are still called the Paramount Decrees. This profile is that studio. It is not the modern corporate profile filed under any later Paramount name.

Block booking forced an independent theater to license films in a block. Wanting one title meant taking others. Theater ownership let the studio prefer its own screens for first-run showings. The Supreme Court's 1948 decision and the decrees that followed are the remedy the library records. Studios had to get out of the business of owning the theaters and had to stop the booking practices the Court condemned.

The decrees then sat in the background of American film licensing for decades. The Justice Department ended them in 2020. Ending the orders is a later chapter. It does not change what the 1948 remedy was for: a studio system that tied films together and owned the houses that showed them.

Paramount is the namesake defendant. The practices at issue were industry-wide among the majors.

Block booking is a tie. Access to one film was conditioned on taking a package.

Divestiture of theaters was the structural piece of the remedy the decrees imposed.

Independent theater owners were the businesses foreclosed by studio-owned first-run houses and by package licensing.

Audiences saw the result as the program at the local cinema, including films the exhibitor had to take to get the ones people asked for.