"Pictures Seem to Run in Cycles": Industry Discourse and the Economics of Film Cycles in Classical Hollywood

Cycles were a useful profit-making strategy within the high output of the Hollywood studio system where recycling and imitation were built into production practices and the reproductions of recent successes helped mitigate risk. While the growing research on cycles has identified their usefulness for situating films within their industrial and historical context, this research largely remains focused on production practices and cultural trends. This article offers a broader survey and analysis of the industry discourse about cycles across the classical Hollywood era. It provides insight into the specific commercial strategies cycles enacted by Hollywood while pointing to distribution and exhibition as key forces in cycle formation.