Top 10 media groups worldwide (€ billions, 2015)

The European film landscape is characterised by the strong presence of major Hollywood companies, such as Walt Disney, 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Warner Bros. Strikingly, despite US-based companies having produced only 789 feature films in 2016 – compared to 1 740 European productions in the same period – they account for almost 68 % of the EU market, while European companies hold only 27 %. What makes these majors so powerful is the fact that they are vertically integrated, with activities spanning production and distribution, thus controlling the most important components of the global audiovisual industry.
Seven of the top 10 global media groups have a film-making subsidiary: these are the five US majors, Japan’s Sony Pictures, and the recently created Dutch Altice studios.