What is commercial cinema?

Answer 1

Mainstream or Commercial cinema could be defined as cinema which is produced with a commercial aspect associated with it. Non-commercial and/or art movies are on the contrary are often designed as a notion of the creators choice with no specific importance or inclination to how much business they do. Commercial cinema simply is an object of business oriented for the mass in general. Where as other non-conventional movies are intended for a nice audience. However a non-commercial movie can also turn into a commercial movie owing to the business it does. Most of the movies that run on theaters and the dvds we crave to buy at stores are mostly commercial movies where as the non-commercial ones mostly survive at various Film Festivals and few extra-ordinary ones gain reputation and become popular often commercially successful.

It could be however argued, that a commercial movie also has an aspect of art in it, hence why it could not be referred as art film. The idea here is art becomes a commodity (an object of commerce) when it lacks its exclusiveness. Probably an art film is unique, very exclusive, unconventional and a signature work of the creator/director or the team. However a commercial film works on the same formula and the structure is pretty similar for making a hit. It is just like the difference between a chefs specialty in some restaurant at the corner of some street which you would not get anywhere in the world compared to the McDonald Berger which comes as a set package!