Herding Cats; or, The Possibilities of Unproduction Studies

It goes without saying that media studies examines media that has been produced, but what value might we find in those projects that were not produced? This article turns to failure as a productive site for inquiry, especially for archival work into production cultures. Taking Amblin's unproduced adaptation of Cats, I argue that we can turn to correspondence, contracts, and scripts of unproduced media for useful case studies into the complex relationship between creatives and industry. This model proves particularly useful for a production studies–informed inquiry in which individual creative agency and labor are foregrounded through textual and discursive analyses.