Hype, Hope, and Hit in Movies: A Contribution to the Metatheory of Bubbles

This paper is part of an ongoing project to develop an interdisciplinary metatheory of bubbles, relevant to the contemporary era of globalization and rapid, technology-aided communication flows. Just in the first few years of the 21st century, several bubbles have appeared – the so-called dotcom bubble, the housing bubble, and the financial derivatives bubble.To develop a more general and multidisciplinary conceptual framework for understanding bubbles, we have ongoing projects looking at bubbles of various types: technological, financial, and cultural. This paper focuses on a particular cultural field where relatively small bubbles may form. Movies represent a good arena to examine cultural bubbles on a scale that is not daunting, and where the hype-hope-hit dynamics can be observed more frequently than in most other settings.