What happens to the release print of a feature film after a movie theater stops running it? It is sent back to the studio or distributor in order to keep tabs on it to prevent piracy? Is it simply destroyed?
The prints are sent back to the distributor, and the distributor destroys the prints. One print may be retained at each of the distribution centers for revival showings.
I can’t speak for today (I never can, can I?), but in the silent days, the reels of film would just be dumped on the last theater to show it. Features in those days would travel from big towns to small towns and eventually to other countries–which is why missing silent films so often show up in Assboink, Iowa (where a projectionist took the reels home and his grandson found them 50 years later), or Russia or Poland or China (where the American titles would have been replaced, and no one knows what the hell films they have anymore).
When I was researching Theda Bara, I contacted film archives all over the world searching for her many missing films. “We might very well have them,” most of them wrote back. “We have stacks of unlabeled cans of film, and no staff or money to go through them.” Meanwhile, they are crumbling away, day by day . . .