Hollywood and the United Kingdom

Hollywood and the United Kingdom are connected via the American industry's use of British source material, an exchange of talent, and Hollywood's financial investment in British facilities and productions. The American studios have had their own bases in the UK in the past, such as MGM-British, and Warner Bros. owned shares in British distributor Warner-Pathé, once part of the Associated British Pictures Corporation.

Numerous Hollywood films have a British dimension (based on British people, stories or events), many of which have had enormous worldwide commercial success. Two of the top eight highest-grossing films worldwide of all time have some British historical, cultural or creative dimensions: Titanic (1997), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), made in New Zealand, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2005). Adding four more Harry Potter films and one more Lord of the Rings movie, plus the Tim Burton version of Alice in Wonderland (2010), and more than half of the top twenty most financially successful films, had a substantial British dimension.

British influence can also be seen with the 'English Cycle' of Disney animated films, which include Alice in Wonderland (1951), Peter Pan (1953), One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), The Sword in the Stone (1963), and The Jungle Book (1967). Disney first became interested in live-action films as a means of using financial reserves which had built up in Britain, and could not be repatriated owing to exchange controls, by making two films from Scottish and English sources. These were Treasure Island (1950) and The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952), which were both successes at the box office. The studio continued to draw on British source material for its animated films after Walt Disney's death in 1967, with the cartoon feature films Robin Hood (1973), The Rescuers (1976) and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977), one of many Disney to draw on A. A. Milne's characters.

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