Hollywood is a neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles County, California, mostly within the city of Los Angeles. Its name has come to be a shorthand reference for the U.S. film industry and the people associated with it. Many notable film studios, such as Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures, are located near or in Hollywood.

The cinema of the United States, consisting mainly of major film studios along with some independent films, has had a large effect on the global film industry since the early 20th century. The dominant style of American cinema is classical Hollywood cinema, which developed from 1910 to 1962 and is still typical of most films made there to this day. While Frenchmen Auguste and Louis Lumière are generally credited with the birth of modern cinema, American cinema soon came to be a dominant force in the emerging industry. With more than 600 English-language films released on average every year As of 2017, it produced the fourth-largest number of films of any national cinema, after India, Japan, and China. While the national cinemas of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand also produce films in the same language, they are not part of the Hollywood system. Because of this, Hollywood has also been considered a transnational cinema, and has produced multiple language versions of some titles, often in Spanish or French. Contemporary Hollywood often outsources production to the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The major film studios of Hollywood are the primary source of the most commercially successful and most ticket-selling movies in the world.