Quotes from Ben Fritz

The franchise film era is, in many ways, a return to the studio system. Only now the major entertainment companies don't own the most important talent—they own the most important cinematic brands.

Kinberg grew up in Hollywood but was largely repulsed by it. His father had been only moderately successful and had "complicated feelings" about his profession. Many of Kinberg's friends at the private school he attended in the 1980s were the children of film-industry professionals who were snorting drugs and getting divorced and generally doing whatever was necessary to turn their kids into the future protagonists of a Bret Easton Ellis book.

The rise of original, risk-taking television is directly tied to the decline of original, risk-taking filmmaking and the dawn of the franchise age of film—one in which studios no longer coddle creative talent, release movies of every type for everyone, or pride themselves for taking risks on quality and new ideas. Instead, movie studios now exist primarily for the purpose of building and supporting branded franchises that continue in sequels, toys, and theme-park attractions.

trend you've noticed and quite possibly one you don't like.

The first section takes Sony Pictures as a focal point to explain how we got to where

The second section of the book leaves Sony behind, along with Hollywood's past, to look at companies, trends, and people that reveal where the movie business

Amazon is building what could be the biggest and most culturally meaningful independent movie business of this century.

Agile digital players like Amazon and Netflix are taking control of the rest.

you're a fan of Marvel or DC or Fast & Furious or the Planet of the Apes, you've got to be a fan of the movies.

As more and more films are created as part of a cinematic universe, moviemakers are adopting a similar model. It's the producers, or writer-producers, who create and manage cinematic universes. Directors work in partnership with them and are expected to exercise their creativity within a predetermined set of parameters. A groundbreaking director's bold new creative vision is not what anyone is looking for in the ninth Fast & Furious movie or the sixth Mission: Impossible.