Tom Shone is a British film critic and writer. He was the Sunday Times film critic from 1994-9 and has written for Slate, the New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

, the New York Times and the London Daily Telegraph.

He is the author of Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer

Blockbuster (2004 book)

Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer is a 2004 non-fiction book by British film critic Tom Shone published by Simon & Shuster UK Ltd, ISBN 0-7432-6838-5....

, published in 2004 by Simon & Shuster, ISBN 0-7432-6838-5. The book is an analysis of the Hollywood blockbuster phenomenon driven chiefly by Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg

Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...

 and George Lucas

George Lucas

George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...

 in the 1970s, based on interviews with these and other film-makers. Shone's first novel, In The Rooms, was published in the U.K. by Huchinson on July 2, 2009.