In your first semester you'll explore contemporary forms of intertextuality across media, drawing on theories of adaptation, transmedia, remakes, sequels and series, franchising, and paratextuality. You'll analyse how intertextuality operates within presold media products, considering processes of production such as recontextualisation, rebooting, extension, and transmedia storytelling.
Creative decisions within individual texts will be examined in relation to production contexts and broader cross‑media storytelling strategies prevalent within the film, television, video game, and wider media industries.
In the second semester you'll examine contemporary ‘cult’ media texts, focusing on ‘quality’ film and television drama produced in the UK, USA, and Europe and distributed to global audiences. You'll consider industrial, aesthetic, cultural, and theoretical perspectives on cult media, including questions of authorship, audience, fandom, and reception in a post‑television convergence era, with opportunities to explore cult phenomena beyond film and television such as music and video games.