Buy Backlot: Hollywood Studio Tycoon PC key

Backlot: Hollywood Studio Tycoon is a historically grounded simulation of the motion picture industry, beginning on January 6, 1930, at the start of the Golden Age and continuing into the streaming era. You take charge of a studio with an empty soundstage and a million dollars in credit, competing with rival moguls as economics, technology and culture change over time. Film budgets rise with the era: a picture that costs $400,000 in 1930 costs $15 million by 2020.

Make a picture

Every film starts with a script. You can commission one by briefing your writers on its genre and subject, let them choose what to write, or buy a script that is already available. Then you cast the film, assign a director, decide on its effects budget and set its production schedule. Rushing production affects what appears on screen, while taking longer adds costs by the week.

Manage your artists

Signing artists gives your studio control over their contracts. You can loan an artist to a rival for eight weeks and collect a fee without asking them, exercise an option at a higher figure or end a contract under a morals clause. Publicity can also propose changing an artist’s name and birthplace.

Navigate the town

The Mayor’s office, the Chief of police and the Mob all keep track of your studio’s actions and compete with one another. Paying a local arrangement means the Chief hears about it; calling the law instead leaves the Mob remembering what you did. Building a relationship with one of them can get you out of trouble once, after which you owe them again.

Book theatrical releases

Choose the week a film opens and how many cinemas will show it. Rivals can move their own releases forward to compete with yours. Films earn money over a week-by-week theatrical run, measured against the strongest film currently in cinemas. Pulling a film early means paying to break its booking.

Earn beyond cinemas

After a theatrical run, you can sell a film to television, home video or a streaming platform. You can build a franchise, though audiences tire of it one installment at a time, and license novelizations, comics and tie-in games. You can also make television series as television enters the industry.

Industry changes

Historical innovations arrive on their real timelines and change production and monetization:

• 1935: Three-strip full-color photographic processing.
• 1948: Broadcast television enters living rooms nationwide.
• 1953: Anamorphic widescreen formats compete with home sets.
• 1975: Multi-channel optical surround sound.
• 1980: Home video cassettes and rental markets.
• 1993: Photorealistic computer-generated imagery (CGI).
• 2007: Subscription-based streaming rights and catalog licensing.
• 2009: Digital stereoscopic 3D.

Studio decisions

Handwritten events present choices with costs on both sides, from a Chief of police asking you to put his son in a film to a projectionist in Toledo who has run a picture 406 times and still comes back for the ending.