The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies

by Ben Fritz

Overview

A Los Angeles Times Bestseller
Winner of the Best Non-Fiction Book Prize at the 2018 National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards

“Ben Fritz crafts an electrifying and essential book that carefully chronicles how Hollywood tradition is collapsing and new models are fueling the future. A must-read.”—Ava DuVernay, director of A Wrinkle in Time, Selma, and 13th

The stunning metamorphosis of twenty-first-century Hollywood and what lies ahead for the art and commerce of film

Ben Fritz chronicles the dramatic shakeup of America’s film industry, bringing equal fluency to both the financial and entertainment aspects of Hollywood. He offers us an unprecedented look deep inside a Hollywood studio to explain why sophisticated movies for adults are an endangered species while franchises and super-heroes have come to dominate the cinematic landscape. And through interviews with dozens of key players at Disney, Marvel, Netflix, Amazon, Imax, and others, he reveals how the movie business is being reinvented.

Despite the destruction of the studios’ traditional playbook, Fritz argues that these seismic shifts signal the dawn of a new heyday for film. The Big Picture shows the first glimmers of this new golden age through the eyes of the creative mavericks who are defining what entertainment will look like in the new era.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780544789777
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/16/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	309
Sales rank:	201,260
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

BEN FRITZ is an editor for the Wall Street Journal. He previously covered Hollywood for the Journal, the Los Angeles Times and Variety and is coauthor of the best-selling All the President's Spin. A graduate of Swarthmore College, he lives in Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

A Note on Sources ix

Introduction: Groundhog Day - How Franchises Killed Originality in Hollywood xiii

Part 1 How Hollywood Got Here

1 The Odd Couple: Lynton and Pascal's Glory Days at Sony 3

2 Reality Bites: How Everything Went Wrong for the Movie Business 21

3 Inception: The Secret Origin of the Superhero Movie 37

4 Revenge of the Nerds: The Rise of Marvel Studios 53

5 Spider-Man: Homecoming-Why Sony Gave Up Its Most Valuable Asset 75

6 Star Wars: The Decline of the A-List 83

7 A Star Is Born: Netflix, the New Home for Movie Stars 101

8 Frozen: Why Studios Stopped Making Mid-Budget Dramas 111

9 Trading Places: How TV Stole Movies' Spot atop Hollywood 125

Part 2 Where Hollywood Is Headed

10 The Terminator: Disney, the Perfect Studio for the Franchise Age 143

11 The Producers: Creativity Meets Franchise Management 165

12 The Shop Around the Corner: Amazon Saves the Indie Film Business 187

13 Apt Pupil: China's Shifting Relationship with Hollywood 201

14 Field of Dreams: Studio Defectors and the Future of Nonfranchise Films 221

15 The Last Picture Show? 231

Afterword 243

Acknowledgments 257

Notes 261

Index 279

Editorial Reviews

03/15/2018
If Bob Woodward and Michael Lewis cowrote a book about the movie business, it would probably look a lot like this one. Wall Street Journal reporter Fritz explores the dramatic changes in Hollywood's financial landscape over the past 15 years through the recent fall from grace of Sony Pictures. Much of the author's inside information came from reading thousands of private emails made public in the 2014 cyberhack on Sony, adding a sense of both intrigue and exploitation to his story. What executives at Sony failed to do was realize the culture of entertainment on a national and international scale had shifted toward a demand for serialized and superhero-based films, with studios such as Warner Bros. and Marvel beating them to the punch. With new players Netflix and Amazon creating brilliant dramatic content, and TV reaching new heights of quality programming, the days of the old models are gone. VERDICT A revealing portrait of the current state of the business of Hollywood, written with a journalist's ear for making complex material clear and engaging.—Peter Thornell, Hingham P.L., MA

Library Journal

03/12/2018
For anyone wondering why the current output of Hollywood is so dissatisfying, journalist Fritz (coauthor of All the President’s Spin) has a simple explanation: greed. Drawing in large part on the hacked emails of Amy Pascal, the Sony Pictures chief with a reputation for nurturing talent and championing mid-budget adult dramas, Fritz succinctly lays out the economics behind the current dominance of big-budget franchise movies over smaller, character-driven films. Nowhere is this more evident than in the diverging fates of two studios, Sony and Disney. Pascal’s Sony, which from the 1990s onwards emphasized “mid-sized interesting movies” such as Jerry Maguire and As Good as It Gets, increasingly found in the 2000s that this formula could not compete with even one franchise movie—Disney’s The Avengers alone grossed $1.5 billion. Fritz also recounts the rise of Marvel Studios, Amazon and Netflix’s embrace of the smaller films that major studios now ignore, and the role of Chinese investors in keeping Hollywood afloat. Pascal emerges as an almost tragic figure, someone “who had lost herself” or at least “a place for people like her” in today’s Hollywood. Fritz’s book is a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse at the forces that determine what gets played at the local cineplex. Agent: David McCormick, McCormick Literary. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

A Los Angeles Times Bestseller "Fritz uses his skills as both a financial journalist and a natural storyteller to spin a narrative that is detailed, funny and a little terrifying. Anyone with a love for intelligent cinema made for discerning adults should be concerned."—The Globe and Mail “The Big Picture is a must-read. It’s an informative, entertaining, often maddening look at how the film industry ended up where it is today . . . Pick up Fritz’s book. I guarantee you’ll likely power through it in one sitting, unable to put it down.”—Slashfilm "Fritz offers fascinating tidbits in his unpacking, and argues that we're entering a new golden age of moviemaking."—Entertainment Weekly “Fritz’s book is a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse at the forces that determine what gets played at the local cineplex.”—Publishers Weekly “The Big Picture holds the reader’s attention by telling the stories of senior executives whose careers were destroyed or made by the changes in the entertainment industry.  Mr. Fritz culled the fruits of the infamous Sony hack to paint a vivid portrait of life inside the studio as it struggled to respond to the structural challenges it faced.”—The New York Times "A definitive history of the film business in the 21st century."—In Reel Deep “Ben Fritz crafts an electrifying and essential book that carefully chronicles how Hollywood tradition is collapsing and new models are fueling the future. A must-read.”—Ava DuVernay, director of A Wrinkle in Time, Selma, and 13th "The best book on Hollywood I’ve read in a long time. Fritz explains how and why the invasion of the big buck comic book franchises crushed the Hollywood we once knew.”—Peter Biskind, author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs, and Rock ’n Roll Generation Saved Hollywood "An absorbing and insightful chronicle of the massive upheaval in the movie industry over the past 10 years. Fritz uses his skill as a reporter to meld the financial and creative aspects of a business undergoing radical transformation into a compelling narrative. It’s a great read not just for those of us who work in the industry, but for anyone with a passion for film.” —Jason Blum, producer of Get Out, Split, Whiplash   “A great read for anyone who loves movies or the movie business and eye opening for anyone who cares about the future of our industry, whether they agree with Ben's provocative analysis or not.”—Ron Meyer, vice chairman, NBCUniversal and co-founder, Creative Artists Agency “For those looking for inside scoops on the hidden relationships among movie studios, movie development, and choosing actors, this book is a treasure house.”—Kirkus Reviews —

From the Publisher

2018-01-22
How the superhero movie saved Hollywood—for now.In November 2014, a cyberbreach at Sony Pictures Entertainment released thousands of emails. Wall Street Journal entertainment industry reporter Fritz (co-author: All the President's Spin: George W. Bush, the Media and the Truth, 2004) believed that these emails/documents "could be the core of a much bigger story—one about the changes in Hollywood and why we get the movies we do." He first focuses on Sony's senior executives, financial records, and films, unveiling a new Hollywood in which "franchises and brands dominate, original ideas and stars are marginalized, and TV and film have swapped places in our culture and our economy." Thanks to additional interviews, the author is able to bring us right into the Sony offices to listen to executives grappling with what film to make next, why the last one failed, which actors to pass over, and what they can do to make money for their investors. As Fritz shows, Sony made many bad decisions, and even though they did well with Spider-Man, Sony's highest-grossing domestic release ever, they were late to catch the franchise train other studios were riding to the bank with the Avengers, X-Men, Iron Man, and Star Wars. Fritz shows how studios responded to the income drop in DVD sales brought about by internet piracy and the rise of Netflix and Redbox. The international market was exploding, and China, which had vast financial influence in the studios, was at the top. The author explores the "extraordinary" rise of Marvel studios, the rise and fall of many former A-list actors—Will Smith, Adam Sandler, Tom Cruise—and the stunning rise of TV's smart series shows, like Breaking Bad, "better than anything most movie studios have made this century."Although the book sometimes bogs down under the weight of so much information, for those looking for inside scoops on the hidden relationships among movie studios, movie development, and choosing actors, this book is a treasure house.

Kirkus Reviews