Available From UC Press

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.

"Power Surge is a brilliant follow-up to The Genius of the System. Tom Schatz writes equally well about the art and the business of film, and the intersection of the two. He is the best living writer about the industrialization of the art form called the movies."—Joel Coen, Academy Award–winning filmmaker of Fargo and No Country for Old Men

"Writing with the authority and perspicacity that marked his landmark The Genius of the System, Schatz has produced a book we didn't know we needed: an astute analysis of why the American movie industry between 1989 and 2004 should be considered a recent but already-lost golden age. At home in both the boardroom and the screening room, Schatz's smartly readable style, comprehensive research, and thorough understanding of the complexities of all aspects of the business remind us of what we have forgotten and reveal what we need to know."—Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times film critic for nearly thirty years and author of Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg: The Whole Equation

"More than a worthy sequel to The Genius of the System, this is a razor-sharp analysis of movies in the era of conglomeration."—Peter Biskind, New York Times best-selling author of Pandora's Box: How Guts, Guile, and Greed Upended TV

"Schatz's wild narrative is an exciting, fact-packed chronicle of contemporary film history, full of fascinating and amusing details. It allows the reader an inside look at the melding of talents and finance that benefits the movie-going public so well. The book is exciting, like the movies it describes."—Bob Shaye, Founder, CEO, and Co-Chairman of New Line Cinema

"Of the many books detailing the recent histories of individual studios or the rise of the indies, this is the only one you really need. It lucidly covers the entire waterfront. By deftly interweaving the independent-film story with the evolution of corporate entertainment, Schatz vividly conveys the big picture but with incredible attention to all the telling details."—John Pierson, author of Spike, Mike, Slackers and Dykes: A Guided Tour Across a Decade of American Independent Cinema and creator of Split Screen 

"This long-awaited sequel to Schatz's definitive The Genius of the System deftly unpacks the complex history behind 'Indiewood,' mining a wealth of evidence to detail the logic of film form within industry's political economy. The prize? A compelling history of how prestreaming Hollywood methodically mainstreamed an 'outsider' indie ethos into a highly profitable inside conglomerate strategy."—John Thornton Caldwell, author of Specworld: Folds, Faults, and Fractures in Embedded Creator Industries

"A fascinating take on the studio and independent film business in a volatile and exciting period of Hollywood consolidation. Schatz gets the inside track from very reliable narrators, which is refreshing in this world of power brokers and spinmasters not known for revealing the real stories."—Bob Berney, CEO of Picturehouse