Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction: The Road to Marvel Studios 1. ‘Films Lead Policy’: Marvel's Industrial (R)evolution and the Birth of a Studio 2. An Organization of Storytellers: The Marvel Story, According to Marvel 3. 'Doth Mother know you weareth her drapes?': The Genre Tactics of Marvel Studios 4. Captains America 5. Teams/Screens 6. Star-Lord, Who?: Guardians of the Galaxy - Raiding the ‘B-List’ for New Legends 7. ‘A Little Old-Fashioned…’: Marvel Studios and Pixar 8. Tie-ins, Tie-ups and Let-downs: Marvel's Transmedia Empire Conclusion Appendix: Timeline Notes Bibliography Index
The first book tracing the formation of one of the most financially effective and creatively praised production entities working in blockbuster cinema today.
Martin Flanagan is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Salford, UK. His work studies the forms of contemporary Hollywood entertainment. As an author he has contributed to the New Review of Film and Television Studies and Scope, and the edited collections Web-Spinning Heroics (2012) and Film and Comic Books (2007). His monograph, Bakhtin and the Movies: New Ways of Understanding Hollywood Film (2009), explores and situates superheroic narratives within wider Hollywood generic traditions. Andy Livingstone is a writer for Cinema 22 magazine and neophyte documentary filmmaker, working in Manchester’s independent cinema scene. Areas of focus in his academic program included transmedia and the marketing and genre placement of comic book adaptations, both of which subjects he considered in extended projects. Mike McKenny has covered the UK festival sector and provided feature articles for Film and Festivals. As a film programmer, he led community cinema Miniciné to win the national (UK) award for Best Film Programming in 2012. His academic training in Film and Business Studies has fostered a keen focus and understanding of business environments as they specifically pertain to modern entertainment organisations.
The Marvel Studios Phenomenon presents an important industrial
analysis and history for both fans of the Marvel Universe/Marvel
Cinematic Universe and film and media studies scholars ... The text
is suitable for wider audiences as well as for upper-level
undergraduate and graduate courses.
*Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television*
This is a remarkable achievement – at once a detailed history and
an astute assessment of Marvel, and particularly its symbiosis with
Hollywood since the release of Iron Man in 2008. In the charting
the rise of Marvel Studios and the strategic formulation of the
Marvel Cinematic Universe, authors Flanagan, McKenny and
Livingstone provide an intimate, enlightening portrait of the
company that has reshaped popular cinema on a global scale and
effectively reinvented the Hollywood studio system.
*Thomas Schatz, Mary Gibbs Jones Centennial Chair of the Department
of Radio-Television-Film, The University of Texas at Austin,
USA*
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is the most audacious innovation in
the history of the blockbuster. It is a transformation that exists
beyond the individual film, both off in the Asgardian world of the
studio imaginary and in the spinner-racks of local comics stores.
The Marvel Studios Phenomenon takes it all in—the whole transmedial
ball of wax—and shows what can happen when we give corporate form
the same close attention we give our favorite movies, television
shows, and comic books. Flanagan, McKenny, and Livingstone show how
“It’s All Connected,” everything from character and story through
strategic decisions and fan communities. This book is both
up-to-the-minute and sure to be a touchstone when we look back at
Hollywood’s ability to reinvent storytelling—and itself—for the
21st century.
*J.D. Connor, Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies and
History of Art, Yale University, USA*
The Marvel Studios Phenomenon is a robust, broad examination of how
Marvel has developed across media via analysis of a range of
themes, characters, films and TV shows.
*Mel Gibson, Senior Lecturer in Childhood Studies, Northumbria
University Newcastle, UK, and Comics Scholar and Consultant*
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