Hollywood Online

<b><i>Hollywood Online</i> provides a historical account of motion picture websites from 1993 to 2008 and their marketing function as industrial advertisements for video and other media in the digital age.</b><br/><i><i><br/></i></i><i>The Blair Witch Project</i>is the most important example of online film promotion in cinema history. Over the last thirty years only a small number of major and independent distributors have converted internet-created buzz into box-office revenues with similar levels of success. Yet readings of how the film's internet campaign<i></i>broke new ground in the summer of 1999 tend to minimize overlook or ignore the significance of other online film promotions. Similarly claims that <i>Blair</i>initiated a cycle of imitators have been repeated in film publications and academic studies for more than two decades.<br/> <br/>This book challenges three major narratives in studies about online film marketing: Hollywood's major studios and independents had no significant relationship to the internet in the 1990s; online film promotions only took off after 1999 because of <i>Blair</i>; and Hollywood cashed-in by initiating a cycle of imitators and scaling up corporate activities online. <i>Hollywood Online</i> tests these assumptions by exploring internet marketing up to and including the film's success online (Pre-<i>Blair</i> 1993-9) then by examining the period immediately after <i>Blair</i>(Post-<i>Blair</i> 2000-8) which broadly coincides with the rise and decline of DVD as well as the emergence of the social media sites MySpace Facebook and Twitter. <br/><i></i>