ABSTRACT
This chapter focusses on the franchise blockbuster film as the heart of the industrial mainstream in 2010s U.S. cinema. Two case studies show the constructed authorship in this field as multifaceted, taking the form of an ‘authorship matrix’: a practice in which a media product is associated with several names, each of which performs certain functions of the author brand in relation to a segment of the audience. The first case study, dealing with J. J. Abrams’s Star Trek reboot film (2009), shows a franchise changing hands between two author brands – Abrams and the original Star Trek series creator Gene Roddenberry – and how potential tensions and conflicts therein are handled in the context of fandom and the general audience. The second looks at authorship in the promotion of two major ‘cinematic universes’, an increasingly common form of film franchise: Marvel Studios’ Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Disney’s Star Wars saga. This section traces the respective positions of, and interactions between, individual film directors and studio presidents in the promotion of the cinematic universe, showing how ideas of cinematic value and authorship play out in the negotiation of studio and individual creative identities and agencies.
