Introduction: The Golden Years

In 1996, a year before the release of The Spanish Prisoner, film industry analysts and critics proclaimed enthusiastically that that was ‘the year of the independents’. At first sight, such a proclamation seemed surprising, given that the hit films of the year were all from the conglomerated Hollywood majors. Fox was responsible for the biggest commercial success of 1996, the extremely popular (and in our case ironically titled) Independence Day (Emmerich), which recorded worldwide grosses of $811.4 million from its cinema release, of which $306.1 million was in the North American market. Warner followed at some distance with Twister (de Bont), the global cinema box office of which was $493.6 million, with $241.7 made in the US and Canada markets, while Paramount was a close third with Mission Impossible (De Palma), with global box-office takings of $464.9 million, $284 million of which was in the domestic market.

On a closer look, however, and beyond the top three in terms of boxoffice receipts, the proclamation ‘the year of the independents’ seemed to have considerable merit, as evidence of a maturing American independent cinema sector was certainly in abundance. For instance, according to an annual industry survey, export revenues for the 130 independent film companies represented by the American Film Marketing Association peaked at $1.65 billion in 1996. Almost a third of these revenues ($501 million) stemmed from worldwide cinema distribution rights – a 37 per cent increase from 1995 – while an impressive $736 million represented revenues generated from the licensing of their films to television – an 11 per cent increase on the previous year.