The Big Picture

The Fight for the Future of Movies

De: Ben Fritz

Narrado por: Timothy Andrés Pabon

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

In the past decade, Hollywood has endured a cataclysm on a par with the end of silent film and the demise of the studio system. Stars and directors have seen their power dwindle, while writers and producers lift their best techniques from TV, comic books, and the toy biz. The future of Hollywood is being written by powerful corporate brands like Marvel, Amazon, Netflix, and Lego, as well as censors in China.

Ben Fritz chronicles this dramatic shakeup with unmatched skill, bringing equal fluency to both the financial and entertainment aspects of Hollywood. He dives deeply into the fruits of the Sony hack to show how the previous model, long a creative and commercial success, lost its way. And he looks ahead through interviews with dozens of key players at Disney, Marvel, Netflix, Amazon, Imax, and others to discover how they have reinvented the business. He shows us, for instance, how Marvel replaced stars with “universes”, and how Disney remade itself in Apple’s image and reaped enormous profits.

But 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 our movies will look like in the new era.

©2018 Ben Fritz (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Very informative

The state of the movie industry has never been in such a state of turmoil than it is now. Ben Fritz explains how we got here, the players involved and what the future holds. This was well researched and written. The reading was superb. A must listen to anyone who is a fan of the movies and for those who contemplate a career behind the camera.

Excellent Analysis

An excellent analysis of where the movie market has been and where it has been going. Major theme is how and why the franchise film has taken over the Hollywood.

Excellent and informative

This book is an entertaining primer on the motion picture industry. I may very well give it a second listen—it’s that good.

One of the best industry books, poor reader

It really shouldn’t be this hard to find a narrator who can properly pronounce names.

Pretty interesting about business side of movies

It was good and I'm glad I listened. Made some valid points about franchises dominating and Disney taking such control of the industry. It was clearly published before Han Solo and Dumbo crashed, as the writer spoke of Disney's approach being almost infallible. Not necessarily. I also appreciated learning more about Sandler, Smith, and Sony. Great tidbits here and there. Definitely a must listen for movie buffs. But I have to say, I did find the narrators saying "Warner Bros" instead of "Warner Brothers" annoying. Nor sure why, but it was irksome.