Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Economic and Business History
Episode: Daniel Herbert, "Maverick Movies: New Line Cinema and the Transformation of American Film" (U California Press, 2023)
Description: Daniel Herbert's book Maverick Movies: New Line Cinema and the Transformation of American Film (U California Press, 2023) tells the improbable story of New Line Cinema, a company that cut a remarkable path through the American film industry and movie culture. Founded in 1967 as an art film distributor, New Line made a small fortune running John Waters’s Pink Flamingos at midnight screenings in the 1970s and found reliable returns with the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise in the 1980s. By 2001, the company competed with the major Hollywood studios and reached global box office success with the Lord of the Rings fran...