Power Surge
Conglomerate Hollywood and the Studio System's Last Hurrah
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Jul 7, 2026
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- $19.99
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- Pre-Order
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
From the author of The Genius of the System, the classic tale of Hollywood’s first golden age, comes the story of its last.
Thomas Schatz returns us to an era when a newly enriched movie industry rediscovered its creative energy, and indie went mainstream without losing its edge.
Between 1989 and 2004, all the old studios either merged with other media giants or were swallowed up by even bigger diversified behemoths, leading to an infusion of money and fast-tracking the digital revolution. Yet even as CGI and piles of cash fueled a new breed of blockbusters—Batman and Titanic, Toy Story and The Lord of the Rings—an indie ethos permeated the industry. And at the crossroads of commodification and aesthetic vision, auteurs ranging from Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino to Sofia Coppola and Ang Lee became household names.
Power Surge traces these trajectories, which increasingly clashed and commingled during the 1990s and early 2000s, resulting in nothing short of a new golden age—and perhaps the last gasp of the century-old studio system.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this smart, well-researched history, film scholar Schatz (The Genius of the System) explores what he calls the "conglomerate era" of Hollywood, the period between 1989 and 2004 when a series of mergers and acquisitions between media companies resulted in films with a "sustained level of artistry and prosperity." He argues this was the most important period in Hollywood since the collapse of the studio system a half-century earlier and warrants consideration as another "golden age." The success of Warner Bros.' 1989 Batman, Schatz explains, was fueled by the merger between the studio's parent company and Time Inc., which enabled massive marketing and merchandising campaigns. Giant media companies during this era were also able to fund technological innovations, spurring an explosion of animated films, including Disney's The Little Mermaid, Pixar's Toy Story, and Dreamworks' Shrek. The book closes in 2004 with a trio of franchise hits: Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2, Alfonso Cuarón's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Peter Jackson's Oscar-winning final installment of his Lord of the Rings trilogy. Throughout, Schatz ably balances board room machinations with insightful critical analyses of the period's most influential films. This is a must-read for cinephiles.
