The Disneyfication of Authorship: Above-the-Line Creative Labor in the Franchise Era

Abstract

dominance, the company reshaped the theatrical market, forcing changes onto exhibitors and competing studios (Schwartzel, “Disney Lays Down the Law”; Galloway; D’Alessandro). It also intensified the “streaming wars” by introducing Disney+, the first significant play in streaming video on demand by a major studio and a move that signaled Hollywood’s willingness to pivot to nontheatrical delivery platforms. The other major studios spent the decade trying to catch up by cutting their number of releases and chasing potential franchises at the expense of lowand mid-budget original films (Ball). In short, Disney led Hollywood out of the blockbuster era of the 1990s and early 2000s and came to define how business was done in the franchise era and what the culture that arose out of it looked like. One key facet of this Disney-led transition was a shift in Hollywood’s balance of power away from people and toward brands; in the franchise era, value came from studio-owned intellectual property, not from the contributions of individual artists or workers (Fritz, Big Picture 84–86; Fleury et al. 10–12; Thompson 3). To support this value shift, Disney advanced a discourse around authorship that I refer to here as “corporate auteurism.” This updated and corporatized version of classic auteur theory prioritized managerial expertise over creative vision. Promoted through a vast PR machine, it credited studio executives (specifically, Kevin Feige, John Lasseter, and Kathleen Kennedy) with masterminding the studio’s biggest brands (Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars, respectively) and Introduction