Indie, Inc.: Miramax and the Transformation of Hollywood in the 1990s (Texas Film and Media Studies Series)

During the 1990s, films such as sex, lies, and videotape, The Crying Game, Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting, and Shakespeare in Love earned substantial sums at the box office along with extensive critical acclaim. A disproportionate number of these hits came from one company: Miramax. Indie, Inc. surveys Miramax’s evolution from independent producer-distributor to studio subsidiary, chronicling how one company transformed not just the independent film world but the film and media industries more broadly. As Alisa Perren illustrates, Miramax’s activities had an impact on everything from film festival practices to marketing strategies, talent development to awards campaigning. Case studies of key films, including The Piano, Kids, Scream, The English Patient, and Life Is Beautiful, reveal how Miramax went beyond influencing Hollywood business practices and motion picture aesthetics to shaping popular and critical discourses about cinema during the 1990s. Indie, Inc. does what other books about contemporary low-budget cinema have not—it transcends discussions of “American indies” to look at the range of Miramax-released genre films, foreign-language films, and English-language imports released over the course of the decade. The book illustrates that what both the press and scholars have typically represented as the “rise of the American independent” was in fact part of a larger reconfiguration of the media industries toward niche-oriented products.

Humor & Entertainment

Perren, Alisa

Movies

University of Texas Press

The American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood (International Screen Industries)

Product Description 
The American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood traces the evolving relationship between the American comic book industry and Hollywood from the launch of X-Men, Spider-Man, and Smallville in the early 2000s through the ascent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Arrowverse, and the Walking Dead Universe in the 2010s. Perren and Steirer illustrate how the American comic book industry simultaneously has functioned throughout the first two decades of the twenty-first century as a relatively self-contained business characterized by its own organizational structures, business models, managerial discourses, production cultures, and professional identities even as it has remained dependent on Hollywood for revenue from IP licensing. The authors' expansive view of the industry includes not only a discussion of the “Big Two,” Marvel/Disney and DC Comics/Time Warner, but also a survey of the larger comics ecosystem. Other key industry players, including independent publishers BOOM! Studios, IDW, and Image, digital distributor ComiXology, and management-production company Circle of Confusion, all receive attention. Drawing from interviews, fieldwork, archival research, and trade analysis, The American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood provides a road map to understanding the operations of the comic book industry while also offering new models for undertaking trans- and inter-industrial analysis. 
 Review 
"The superhero team-up of Perren and Steirer reveals how the American comic book industry intersects with the world of film and television without losing focus on the unique business and creative culture that makes comics unique. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in how the 21st century comics business has―and has not―changed through its alliance with Hollywood. Yet students of film and television will find the book equally important as it reveals how those industries, too, might be transformed in turn by their relationship to comics. A must read for anyone interested in the amazing convergences, spectacular strategies, and uncanny mutations that define media industries." - Derek Johnson, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA"If you are looking for an analysis about how the comic book industry works in the twenty-first century and the connection between it and Hollywood then you will be richly rewarded by Perren and Steirer’s meticulous and insightful book." - Ian Gordon, National University of Singapore, Singapore"What Perren and Steirer have penned is long overdue, but arguably well-worth the wait. As the comic book industry continues to be exploited by Hollywood, the questions of impact and effect on both industries have grown ever more important. To those of us for whom comics is our passion as much as our livelihood, analysis of the relationship between the two is more important than ever. This is a relationship that will never be unmade, and understanding not just the tensions binding us together, but the dangers, isn’t simply wise; it may be vital to the very survival of our medium. This is a work that every comic creator should study, and that comics publisher should learn, and that every Hollywood exec should, at the least, pretend they’ve read." - Greg Rucka, creator of The Old Guard"An interesting and informative read for all those tinfoil-and-Super-8 kids in ‘70s and ‘80s who grew up watching half-heartedly made TV shows and movies about their favorite comic characters, thought they could do better, and went on not just to create comics, but also modern movies and TV inspired by them. For those interested in the secret origin of how Hollywood got super-powers, Perren and Steirer reveal all." - Amanda Conner, comic book artist and illustrator 
 About the Author 
Alisa Perren is Associate Professor in the Department of Radio-Television-Film and Co-Director of the Center for Entertainment and Media Industries at The University of Texas at Austin. She is author of 
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Comics & Graphic Novels

Steirer, Gregory

History & Price Guides

British Film Institute

About the Author\nAlisa Perren is Associate Professor in the Department of Radio-Television-Film and Co-Director of the Center for Entertainment and Media Industries at The University of Texas at Austin. She is author of Indie, Inc.: Miramax and the Transformation of Hollywood in the 1990s (2012), co-editor of Media Industries: History, Theory, and Method (2009), and co-founder and editorial collective member of the journal Media Industries.\nGregory Steirer is Associate Professor of English and Film Studies at Dickinson College. A former National Endowment for the Humanities fellow and researcher for the Carsey-Wolf Center's Media Industries Project, he has published extensively on digital media, comic books, and intellectual property law.\nMichael Curtin is the Duncan and Suzanne Mellichamp Professor of Film and Media Studies with affiliated appointments in Global Studies and East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. He is the author of Redeeming the Wasteland: Television Documentary and Cold War Politics (Rutgers, 1996) and Playing to the World's Largest Audience: The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV (2008), and the co-editor, with Lynn Spigel, of 'The Revolution Wasn't Televised: Sixties Television and Social Conflict' (1997) and, with Richard Ohmann, Gage Averill, David Shumway and Elizabeth Traube, of 'Making and Selling Culture' (1996).\nPaul McDonald is Professor of Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King's College London, UK. His books include, as co-editor, Hollywood and the Law (BFI, 2015); 'The Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry (2008); as author, Hollywood Stardom (2013), and 'Video and DVD Industries' (BFI, 2007). He is the editor, with Michael Curtin, of the BFI series 'International Screen Industries'.\nThe American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood traces the evolving relationship between the American comic book industry and Hollywood from the launch of X-Men, Spider-Man, and Smallville in the early 2000s through the ascent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Arrowverse, and the Walking Dead Universe in the 2010s.\nPerren and Steirer illustrate how the American comic book industry simultaneously has functioned throughout the first two decades of the twenty-first century as a relatively self-contained business characterized by its own organizational structures, business models, managerial discourses, production cultures, and professional identities even as it has remained dependent on Hollywood for revenue from IP licensing. The authors' expansive view of the industry includes not only a discussion of the “Big Two,” Marvel/Disney and DC Comics/Time Warner, but also a survey of the larger comics ecosystem. Other key industry players, including independent publishers BOOM! Studios, IDW, and Image, digital distributor ComiXology, and management-production company Circle of Confusion, all receive attention. Drawing from interviews, fieldwork, archival research, and trade analysis, The American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood provides a road map to understanding the operations of the comic book industry while also offering new models for undertaking trans- and inter-industrial analysis.

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