Film and Video Production Company Revenue Benchmark

Average Film and Video Production Company Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

The 2022 Economic Census counts every motion picture and video production business with paid employees, from a two-person corporate video shop to a major studio, and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing that total by the number of establishments gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment shown below.

≈$4,823,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

How this is calculated: about $87.5 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 18,147 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $4,823,000 per employer establishment.

Scope: Motion Picture and Video Production, NAICS 512110. The category covers producers of motion pictures, television programs, commercials and other video content. Postproduction studios and film distributors are counted in separate categories. Classified separately in group 5121: 512120 Motion Picture and Video Distribution; 512131 Motion picture theaters (except drive-ins); 512132 Drive-in motion picture theaters, and 2 further codes. Nothing outside that code is counted on this page.

Source US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics (ECNBASIC): ESTAB, RCPTOT and PAYANN by NAICS · Vintage 2022 Economic Census · Calculation BusinessNES · Accessed September 2026

Employer Establishments at Year Five Industry group

Motion picture and video industries, NAICS 5121, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 47.0 to 51.9 percent. This benchmark covers Motion picture and video industries, NAICS 5121, as a whole, and this category accounts for 18,147 of the 26,483 employer establishments in it. A count by age is not a survival rate, because the figures compare two headcounts rather than follow one set of businesses.

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Payroll divided by receipts, both as published for the same year.

Payroll share of receipts, Motion Picture and Video Production, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 16.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll, a small share because much of the labor on a production is hired per project as freelancers or through payroll companies rather than as employees of the production business.

Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes and owner compensation, and it excludes freelance crew, talent, equipment rental, locations and postproduction vendors, which together make up most of a production budget.

Business Scale and Ownership Structure Official data

How large the average establishment is, and whether the population is independent operators or multi-site companies.

Scale and ownership, Motion Picture and Video Production, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

The average establishment employed about 8.2 people, and the industry counted 1.0 employer establishments per firm. That staff count reflects a category where major studios employ thousands and most production companies employ a handful of producers and editors, and the establishments per firm figure shows a trade of single-location businesses.

These are arithmetic industry averages. They state the size of the average establishment and show that multi-establishment ownership exists. They do not show the distribution of business sizes and they do not measure market concentration.

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Data Source Notice

This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.

Figures above are from the 2022 Economic Census reference year, released by the Census Bureau in 2024 and 2025; markets have moved since.

Questions Worth Asking BusinessNES analysis

Film and Video Production Company: why an average that includes studios says little about a local shop.

Before you rely on this benchmark

• Studio, agency producer or local shop? Feature film studios, television producers, commercial production houses and corporate video shops all sit in this category, and their budgets differ by orders of magnitude. The average is pulled up by large producers and describes no single business model.
• How much of the revenue passes through? Production budgets include crew, talent, equipment and locations that the company pays on the client's behalf, so receipts can be large while the producer's own fee is a small share. Revenue overstates what a production company keeps.
• Who owns the content? Producing for a client under a fee is a service business, while producing content the company owns creates assets that may earn for years or fail to earn anything. The two models carry different risk, and the census counts both.
• Where do the crews come from? Freelance directors of photography, sound recordists, editors and grips are hired per project, so a production company scales up and down without changing its payroll. The freelance model explains the small payroll share and hides the real labor behind each project.
• Which incentives and unions apply? Film tax credits vary by state and shape where productions locate, while union agreements can set rates and working conditions on productions that are covered by them. Both affect the cost of producing in a given place in ways the benchmark cannot express.
• How lumpy is the calendar? A production company may earn most of its year from two or three projects, with gaps between them, and losing a single client can empty the pipeline. Annual receipts flatten a revenue pattern that is anything but steady.