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Maverick Movies tells the improbable story of New Line Cinema, a company that cut a remarkable path through the American film industry and movie culture. Founded in 1967 as an art film distributor, New Line made a small fortune running John Waters's Pink Flamingos at midnight screenings in the 1970s and found reliable returns with the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise in the 1980s. By 2001, the company competed with the major Hollywood studios and reached global box office success with the Lord of the Rings franchise. Blurring boundaries between high and low culture, between independent film and Hollywood, and between the margins and the mainstream, New Line Cinema epitomizes Hollywood's shift in focus from the mass audience fostered by the classic studios to the multitude of niche audiences sought today.

"Herbert’s perspective and commentary are refreshing, throughout the reader is not overly saturated with information, rather Herbert shines a light on a film, expands upon its importance, and links it to social, economic, and cultural issues within that period." * Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television *

“Maverick Movies serves as a much-needed contribution to scholarship on the independent distribution and production sector in the late twentieth century. It engages readers with a familiar subject and familiar examples but unearths some previously hidden nuggets of historical interest that help illustrate some of the heretofore gray areas in the shifting industrial business strategies and political economy that have defined much of Hollywood’s last three decades.”

* Media Industries Journal *

Daniel Herbert is Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Media at the University of Michigan and author of Videoland: Movie Culture at the American Video Store.