‘Territory Going Fast!’ State rights distribution and the early multi-reel feature film

Abstract

The state rights system, a regional method of distribution in which film rights are sold off to franchisees on a state-by-state basis, was a longstanding American film institution that emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century and continued through the 1970s. However, film and media historians have largely overlooked the pivotal role of this distribution method in moments of major industrial change. The essay addresses this gap through a focus on the state rights market and the emergence of the multi-reel feature film in the mid-1910s. Initially used as a method of specialty distribution for non-narrative and long-form subjects such as boxing films and filmed passion plays, European importers soon exploited the method’s adaptability to release the earliest multi-reel films of four reels or more. Not only did the state rights method offer manufacturers of multi-reel films an alternative to the short film-based variety program, but the regional method also enabled producers to tailor the entire film-going experience to an individual release, to specialize marketing strategies, and to reap profits from higher production expenditures. In effect, the defining industrial and generic characteristics of the feature film that would emerge by the end of the decade – that of not only a longer but an artistically superior film – were, I argue, developed in the state rights market from 1912 to 1915. Drawing from trade papers and industry discourse, this article frames the state rights market as an overlooked parallel and overlapping American film institution that figured centrally in the construction of the multi-reel moving picture.