I do a lot of research on the business of Hollywood. A post will show some of my work, explain my research process or comment on news items about the business of cinema.
10 most recent posts
Contextualizing mergers and acquisitions in Hollywood, Part 1
A funny effect of media conglomeration in Hollywood is that many people, including myself, can use corporate names to signal whether we are speaking about Hollywood studios as producers of films, or as parts of giant media conglomerates. When we talk about this or that movie being produced by Warner Bros., Paramount, or Universal, we…
Leaving California
To most of us, the beating heart of Hollywood film and TV is where we imagine it is supposed to be, in the historical studio lots of Hollywood, California. This must be where movie magic is made. To those working in film and TV production today, there is certainly not one dream factory, and even…
Netflix’s Crisis of Accumulation: chart book for my SCMS2025 presentation
I will be presenting at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) conference on Friday, April 4 at 6PM. Here is the chart book for the presentation, which contains sources and notes on all of the figures: [ PDF of SCMS2025 Chart Book ] Here is the original abstract I wrote for the presentation:…
SCMS Presentation: The Political Economic Roots of Hollywood Strikes, 1950-2023
Abstract This paper investigates the timing of labour strikes in Hollywood. The occurrence of strikes, such as the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in 2023, can make sense when we have the hindsight to piece together the historical details of what created rifts between labour and management. But was 2023 a particularly fragile year for contract…
The political economic roots of Hollywood strikes, Part 3
[ Missed earlier parts of this series? Find Part 1 here and Part 2 here ] Around the time of this post, SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) produced a tentative agreement in their 2023 negotiations. The SAG-AFTRA National Board approved the tentative agreement, and recommends for the ratification of…
The political economic roots of Hollywood strikes, Part 2
Missed Part 1? You should start here. Around the time of this post, the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) produced a tentative agreement in their 2023 negotiations. The WGA Negotiating Committee, the WGAW Board and WGAE Council all voted unanimously to recommend the agreement on September 26, 2023. As…
The political economic roots of Hollywood strikes, Part 1
On May 2, 2023, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) went on strike after failing to reach an acceptable agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the trade association that negotiates for the film and television interests of the major Hollywood studios. While many of the disagreements between the parties –…
When Hollywood defines the limits of good cinema
On the question of who judges the quality of a film, it is easy to start with a notion that the ultimate judge of a film’s quality is the individual moviegoer. As individual moviegoers, this is often what we think we are doing: we have the autonomy “decide for ourselves” if a film is good…
Do all roads lead to the Oscars? Part II
[ missed Part I? you can read it here ] We ended the last post with a scenario of someone dreaming of their film going all the way to the Academy Awards. But I also waved away any dreamy smoke that clouds our imaginations about this outcome. As was shown in Figure 5, which is…
Do all roads lead to the Oscars? Part I
Sitting through the Academy Awards ceremony can be frustrating if you watch a lot of films. The breadth of your viewings has given you the perspective to see how some very good films are either receiving small numbers of nominations or are outright ignored across all categories. This type of frustration can also build months…
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notes on cinema 