What do they do with the old movie reels from movie theatres?

[ryangarfield]

Just curious what they did with the old copies of movies that they use in the theatres and is it possible to find movie reels of classics like Indiana Jones, Star Wars or whatever?

[jameshgross]

The movies you see in theathers are leased from the distribuor - who has leased then from the movie studio. When the lease is up they are returned and then leased to other theathers. When the runs are over the movie owner will destroy the prints. If at sometime in the future prints are needed they will be made from the master. Some copies may be stored in the Library of Congress or other achieve sites.

[ntscuser]

The movies you see in theathers are leased from the distribuor - who has leased then from the movie studio. When the lease is up they are returned and then leased to other theathers. When the runs are over the movie owner will destroy the prints.

Not always. When a movie had finished its US run, the prints were often sent to Britain, scratches, splice marks and all. I know this because a friend worked for Paramount in the UK and one of his jobs was to manually cut out and splice all the movie segments which were disapproved of by the British censor for UK release!

[edDV]

But the major movie distributors keep track of the copies. By contract they need to be destroyed when they wear out.

if you know a projectionist, you might be able to get some "spliced" frames that "fell to the floor".