ABSTRACT
This chapter presents empirical research on major filmed entertainment’s success in reducing risk from 1950 to 2019. It offers an important empirical foundation on which the artists can theorize Hollywood’s aesthetic preferences in the contemporary period. Thinking that risk in Hollywood is fixed puts blinders on our research, making it difficult to think how the particular techniques of Major filmed entertainment, such as the repetition of genres, sequels and remakes, the cult of movie stars and the institution of false needs and wants, can affect the level of risk or change the social environment about which risk perceptions are made. If Hollywood has ways to manipulate consumer attention, it is hardly straightforward to argue that the sovereign consumer is an unalterable arbiter, possessing the “economic” freedom to always be fickle when the next film is released. Hollywood is content to have its international strategies mirror its strategy in the United States.
