An outdoor movie night in a city, with a crowd watching a film on a large screen. Skyscrapers glow with neon light, displaying movie posters for "Avengers: Endgame" and "Indiana Jones" along with a "$2.799" sign, while film reels frame the scene.

In the mid-2010s, major studios shifted towards producing films that appeal to a broader, worldwide audience. Successful productions generated large revenue such as Avengers: Endgame with $2.799 billion worldwide in 2019. However, the hefty rise in production and marketing costs increased the financial risk significantly, where productions such as Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, with a production budget in excess of $300 million, generated an estimated loss of $143 million for Disney. This in part precipitated the Second Decline, as audiences began to turn away from movie theatres. With this new decline, an opportunity opened up for independent companies to produce films that have upset major studio films for the Academy Award for Best Picture. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (which produces the annual Academy Awards) typically award Best Picture Oscars to films of artistic and scientific merit rather than the franchise films. In recent years, the multiple award wins for independent films such as Spotlight (Open Road, 2015), Moonlight (A24, 2016), Parasite (CJ/Neon, 2019), and CODA (Apple TV+, 2021) has had a notable impact on box-office revenue of other major studio films. The continuing praise of the independent film implies success is not dependent on a film's format, whether it be 3-D, a streaming exclusive, or large-format such as IMAX. Contemporary outcomes of the Cannes Film Festival and the lack of American films winning these awards may also See more