In cementing its dominance in streaming over the past decade, Netflix produced hit shows, signed up almost 240 million subscribers, and minted new franchises—the Holy Grail of Hollywood success. At the same time, the company became the entertainment industry’s grim reaper. First, as a DVD mailer, it accelerated Blockbuster’s demise. Then it upended Hollywood, thrusting cable television and movie studios into existential crises of their own.
Peter Biskind, a long-time entertainment journalist and cultural critic, chronicled in previous bestsellers Hollywood’s groundbreaking New Wave of the 1970s (in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls) and the indie cinema movement of the 1990s (in Down and Dirty Pictures). Now he’s back with Pandora’s Box, a sweeping narrative that begins with HBO’s disruption of broadcast television all the way through the streaming wars and Netflix’s history from a provocative tech upstart that ushered in binge-watching and ad-free television, to now, as an industry leader pushing for the widest audience possible—just like the television networks it displaced as American cultural powerhouses.
