Film Sequels: Theory And Practice From Hollywood To Bollywood

Description

The film sequel has been much maligned in popular culture as a vampirish corporative exercise in profit-making and narrative regurgitation. Drawing upon a wide range of filmic examples from early cinema to the twenty-first century, this exciting new volume reveals the increasing popularity of, and experimentation with, film sequels as a central dynamic of Hollywood cinema. Now creeping into world cinemas and independent film festivals, the sequel is persistently employed as a vehicle for cross-cultural dialogue and as a structure by which memories and cultural narratives can be circulated across geographical and historical locations. This book aims to account for some of the major critical contexts within which sequelisation operates by exploring sequel production beyond box office figures. Its account ranges across sequels in recent mainstream cinema, art-house and 'indie' sequels, non-Hollywood sequels, the effects of the domestic market on sequelisation, and the impact of the video game industry on Hollywood. The book: *Situates the sequel within its industrial, cultural, theoretical and global contexts.
*Offers an essential resource for students and critics interested in film and literary studies, adaptation, critical theory and cultural studies. *Provides the first study of film sequels in world cinemas and independent film-making.

Author description

Carolyn Jess-Cooke is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sunderland.

Table of contents

Introduction - The Age of the $equel: Rethinking the Profit Principle; 1. Origins, New Hollywood, and Originality; 2. Narrative, Genre, and Gender; 3. Interactive Narratives: New Media and Video Game Sequels; 4. Sequels at Sundance: Narrative Franchising, Authorship, and the Avant-Garde; 5. Global Sequels; 6. Sequelization, 9/11, and Secondary Memory; Conclusion: TV, DVD, and the Global Economy.