New Hollywood refers to the time from around the late 1960s to the early 1980s when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence in America, influencing the types of films produced and their production and marketing. They also impacted the way major studios approached filmmaking.
When the amount of cinema-goers dramatically dropped during the mid-60s and Hollywood began to lose substantial amounts of money, the studios hired a host of young filmmakers in an attempt to recover their audiences. This meant that, because the New Hollywood films were being produced by young directors, they mostly appealed to youthful audiences and students.
This new generation of Hollywood filmmaker was film school-educated, counterculture-bred, and, most importantly from the point of view of the studios, young, and therefore able to reach the youth audience they were losing. During the New Hollywood era, the young filmmakers produced fresh and exciting films with a sense of energy, sexuality and a passion for the artistic value of film itself such as 'Taxi Driver', a film produced in 1976 about a depressed young man who becomes a night time taxi driver and becomes dangerously involved with fighting street crime.
Key directors involved with New Hollywood included George Lucas - creator of the Star Wars franchise - and Stanley Kubrick who both directed films that have grown to become world famous blockbusters. Key actors included Al Pacino who is best known for his roles in 'Scar Face' and 'The Godfather' trilogy.
The New Hollywood era began to fall in the mid-70s due to films such as 'Jaws' and 'Star Wars'. These were both unprecedented box office smash hits and opened the eyes of many major corporations to the amount of money that could be earned with the right films. They quickly bought up the Hollywood studios, pushing out New Hollywood of whom's films were now beginning to majorly flop at the box office losing them a lot of money.
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