Produced by Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman's studio Playtone, the six-part series chronicles the cinema of the United States, ranging from the "Golden Age of Hollywood" to the present day.

Owing to the costs incurred with licensing the required film footage, episodes on cinema were not included in past Hanks/Goetzman miniseries projects such as The Sixties.

[1] In an interview with Deadline Hollywood, Goetzman remarked that "it cost a fortune, and some is fair use, depending on how you guys talk about it, and some isn't, but within it, it's an insane undertaking because the licensing is a very tricky business in this type of thing, and you know, you set out thinking, hey, this is going to be great, right?

"[2] He went on to explain that the episodes, in their opinion, would present a "pretty good outline of what those decades are", and that they had managed to obtain every interview they had aimed to include—including John Singleton prior to his death in April 2019,[3] as well as Martin Scorsese and Robert Redford almost immediately before a production deadline.

"[2] Owing to their complementary nature, Variety stated that CNN planned to incorporate The Movies' respective episodes into its marathons of past Hanks/Goetzman miniseries in the future.