ABSTRACT
The final chapter begins with the aftermath of Titanic. The new question for the film industry was the global audience and the opening up of China. Such international distribution patterns were greatly helped by the development of the internet. This crystallized cultural shifts such as the domestication of leisure and the concentration of the culture industries. The biggest cultural players were not always the older conglomerates but newer online distributors such as Netflix, Amazon, and Google, along with Disney and Warner Media (formerly Time Warner). The News Corporation reacted to these and other pressures by first splitting and then by selling its film operations to Disney in 2019. In the immediate aftermath of Titanic, Bill Mechanic greenlighted Fight Club (Fincher, 1999), a film that can be seen as an expression of the anomie induced by transnational corporations. Even Hollywood insiders noticed a loss of passion as the industry turned towards big-budget action-adventure franchises. Fox Searchlight and Fox 2000 put out several non-action films that won acclaim and Academy Awards, but these did not seem to be the essence of the company. Indeed, it is hard to say that there is any essence as executives came and went, and Murdoch gained in political influence. But Fox only had rare successes aside from its two Marvel properties, X-Men and Deadpool. George Lucas retired by selling his company to Disney so that the limited participation that Fox had in the Star Wars universe dwindled to none. Disney was dominating and seemed to understand the global market better than its rivals, despite the long term efforts of Murdoch to operate in China. At the same time, the entire industry was shaken by the rapid expansion of the subscriber video on demand form of distribution championed by Netflix. Murdoch and his sons failed in a bid to own Sky Broadcasting, which they could have used to compete against Netflix, and then rather suddenly decided to sell the film operations to Disney. This 2019 merger substantially means the end of William Fox’s company, although the name Fox will still be used as a brand. This end mirrors a change in the function of film and only the future will give a verdict as to whether there is a significant continuum between the classical phase of film and its current conglomeration.
