RTF Colloquium Speaker: Ryan Briggs

“Where Have All the Good Movies Gone? Industrial Change and Mid-Range Movie Collapse in the Late 2000s”

This presentation traces how the business of Hollywood film development, financing, and revenue modeling changed between the years 2005 and 2010. This was a crucial transitional period in which major studios ceded creative development of non-franchise films to talent agencies, the lucrative DVD market collapsed, and once stable financing mechanisms were upended. These and other industrial developments impacted every level of the business but had particularly negative effects on the viability of so-called mid-budget or mid-range movies. These are slippery terms referring to Hollywood films that are neither low-budget indies nor blockbuster spectacles. Mid-range movies’ in-between status made them especially susceptible to volatile industrial shifts while simultaneously conferring outsized cultural value upon them by filmmakers, film industry reporters, and critics. Through analysis of financial data and the daily reporting of Hollywood and business journalists, this talk offers a detailed explanation of how industrial conditions actually impacted the range of films audiences have access to.

“Where Have All the Good Movies Gone?” pulls from Ryan’s dissertation project, which provides a recent periodization of the Hollywood film business from 2005 to 2019. This industrial history is grounded in an examination of filmmakers such as David Fincher, executives like Megan Ellison, and studios like Focus Features that were primarily invested in specialty and/or mid-range movies. All of whom were significantly constrained by the period’s changing industrial tides. The project argues that over the course of 15 years, Hollywood’s film industry became tremendously unstable, leading to less film originality, reduced textual diversity, and increased film worker precarity.

Immediately following Ryan's talk, he is happy to welcome his co-advisor Professor Tom Schatz to give a brief presentation on his latest book, Power Surge: Conglomerate Hollywood and the Studio System's Last Hurrah. The book chronicles the Hollywood film industry as the majors were swallowed up by a handful of diversified media behemoths, helping to usher in a new age of CGI blockbuster spectacles. At the same time though, an indie ethos arose and permeated the industry. Power Surge traces these dual trajectories as they clashed and commingled during the 1990s and early 2000s, resulting in nothing short of a new Hollywood golden age. A light reception will follow in the DMC 5th floor lobby to celebrate Tom's publication.

About Ryan Briggs 

Ryan David Briggs is a Ph.D. candidate in Media Studies in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin. His research and teaching focus on media industry studies, Hollywood film and television history, and contemporary independent cinema. Ryan's original research can be found in South Central Review, The Velvet Light Trap, and forthcoming in the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies.