How important are film franchises for producers and audiences?

How important are film franchises for producers and audiences?

Film franchises in Hollywood are some on the most economically successful pieces of film, using examples like Harry Potter and Lord Of The Ring as evidence. Because of the success of many franchises, production companies choose to make them often. This is because of many reasons, the man one being Horizontal Integration which is when a company has many other business assets, aside from the actual film itself, to continually bring revenue into the company. A company that does this better than most is Disney. Disney is one of the most successful companies in the world with the market cap being around $103.96 billion. Because of this grand fortune they constantly acquire, Disney are allowed to take risks and are able to get through some of their films not doing too well.

One of the best examples of Disney’s market status not being swayed by a bad production would be the case of the film John Carter (2012) which is noted as the biggest film flop in history with a loss of somewhere between $80 million to $120 million. For a company not quite as successful as Disney, a loss like this could have easily put the company in serious trouble with their financed due to this staggering loss, however, due to Disney’s other movies and projects that year, they ended the year with a $14 million profit, showing that not only is the franchise good for bringing in revenue, but they also provide a constant security to stop businesses going bankrupt due to mistakes.

Recently, Disney bought the Star Wars franchise from George Lucas for $4.05 billion. This is a great risk due to the immense pressure behind owning such a big franchise and trying to make even more money off it. The plans Disney has for Star Wars heavily relies on the willingness of the fans who grew up with it or discovered it more recently. In a lot of cases, reboots and remakes of popular films haven’t gone down to well with the general public such as The Wicker Man (2006) which disappointed audiences and made a loss of $17 million from its budget, but on the other hand, there are film remakes such as Tim Burtons Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which ended on a box office revenue of $471,659,076 and being classed as an immense success by critics and fans of the original, so Disney buying the Star wars brand isn’t so much a ‘hit or miss’ due to its main source of back ups coming from the already die hard fans of the series and also other business assets such as the Star wars expansion to Disney World, the Clone Wars TV show and the  Star Wars Merchandise which Disney will now receive a lot of the profit.

For fans of the series, Despite how much they loved the movies and would like to see more, any remake this much later on is worrying to them as one of the worst things for fans is when a movie doesn’t meet their expectations, it then makes them more weary to see the next one if there s one because they worry that they will once again be disappointed. If Disney’s first Star Wars remake isn’t great, it will severely effect the outcome of the overall decision to buy the brand. Fans are already reluctant to accept George Lucas’ decision to sell, so its likely that they will give the first remake a chance, but after that, nothing is for certain.

Fans are very important to a film franchise just as the franchise is to them. Using the Harry Potter series as an example, the popularity of the Harry Potter books was down to the escapism it allowed children, teenagers and adults to experience, so for those same people, to be able to experience watching the book come to life was a long awaited journey. They would defiantly go and see the first movie, alongside some other people who went solely for the purpose of watching a good movie. After the first movies success, they wee guaranteed an audience for the second movie, whether or not that movie was then also a success, they had almost guaranteed an audience for the remaining films as they are now invested into the franchise.