What happens to movie "stuff"

[joeranger]

So does everything
a. get put in some giant warehouse "thinking govt Raiders/Arc" underground bunker.
b. secretly walk off the set with cast members.
c. get sold to an elite group of collectors

I know this is very general but swag, posters, marketing material, costumes, props. Where does it all go?
Does Hollywood control all this stuff or does it just vary by movie?
Does it make a difference if the movie is a blockbuster or bomb?

 

[joker-scar]

there is no common answer to this question, but most movie posters and company promo stuff that is sent out rarely comes back, even though right on the posters it states that it is to be returned after the release of a film. it all ends up in collectors hands or stores, some thrown out. Rare stuff from the 1930's was thrown out because it wasn't thought to be important, now it is rare BECAUSE most of it didn't survive.
- props is another thing, depends on the company...most is returned to the production company, but some is given away, sold or stolen. Some is misplaced and turn up years later, like OBI WAN's orig 1977 cloak,it turned up in a costume rental house by accident. As with sets, they are mostly destroyed.

 

[El Duderino]

Most is thrown away, others cast members keep, some things get sold, other things sit into the shop for many many years and some things are donated to various restaurants and tourist attractions.

 

[dualedge]

So does everything
a. get put in some giant warehouse "thinking govt Raiders/Arc" underground bunker.
b. secretly walk off the set with cast members.
c. get sold to an elite group of collectors

I know this is very general but swag, posters, marketing material, costumes, props. Where does it all go?
Does Hollywood control all this stuff or does it just vary by movie?
Does it make a difference if the movie is a blockbuster or bomb?

Yeah, as Duderino said

(You left off "d. thrown in the trash" which is a pretty popular option for studios still I think)

You've gotta remember that folks that work on movies don't always have the same appreciation for the stuff we do. To them, some of the stuff we collect really is their "trash"... I mean, there was that flying car thing in the Firefly movie Serenity and that was a pretty significant prop in the movie. It just got dumped on a trash heap and that movie was just a few years ago, y'know? That's not uncommon. If something is hard to store and they don't want it, they'll sometimes just trash it.

Nowadays auctions have taken off to some degree. Sometimes studios will literally sell stuff by the truckload to auction places. You buy this huge shipping container for a bunch of money and some of the stuff in it is trash, some of the stuff in it might be hero props or whatever else. Sometimes like with the Propworx BSG auctions, the studio will work with the auction place beforehand. There's just no standardized way of dealing with all the stuff made for movies and tv shows, y'know?

 

[Treadwell]

OBI WAN's orig 1977 cloak,it turned up in a costume rental house by accident

Not necessarily by accident, as it was probably a rental in the first place.