Film poster

Originally, film posters were produced for the exclusive use of the theatres exhibiting the film the poster was created for, and the posters were required to be returned to the distributor after the film left the theatre. In the United States, posters were usually returned to a nation-wide operation called the National Screen Service (NSS) which printed and distributed most of the film posters for the studios between 1940 and 1984. As an economy measure, the NSS regularly recycled posters that were returned, sending them back out to be used again at another theatre. During this time, a film could stay in circulation for several years, and so many old film posters were badly worn before being retired into storage at an NSS warehouse (most often, they were thrown away when they were no longer needed or had become too worn to be used again). Those posters which were not returned were often thrown away by the theatre owner, but some film posters found their way into the hands of collectors.
After the National Screen Service ceased most of its film-poster printing and distribution operations in 1985, some of the posters which they had stored in warehouses around the United States ended up in the hands of private collectors and film-poster dealers. Today there is a thriving collectibles market in film posters. Some have be become very valuable among collectors, with a few rare examples being auctioned for US$500,000 or more. The record price for a poster was set on November 15, 2005 when US$690,000 was paid for a poster of Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis from the Reel Poster Gallery in London. As a result of market demand, some of the more popular older film posters have been reproduced either under license or illegally. Often there is no indication on these reproductions that they are reproductions, which has led to some problems in the collectibles marketplace.
Beginning in the 1980s, the film studios began taking over direct production and distribution of their posters from the National Screen Service and the process of making and distributing film posters became decentralised. Today, film posters are generally produced in much larger quantities than necessary to promote a film at the theatres, because they are also sold directly to the public by retailers who purchase them at wholesale prices from the studio distributors. Modern film posters are also often sold from websites set up by the studio to promote a given film. Because of this, modern posters are not considered rare, and are usually readily available for purchase by collectors.