SSC Film Studies

How important are film franchises for audiences and producers?

Over the past 10 years audience have been proven to enjoy more demanding experiences that franchises offer. From 2004 to 2015 franchises have been the highest grossing movies at the box office, for example in 2013 Iron Man 3 earned over $1 billion worldwide, where as films such as Oblivion staring two of the biggest film stars of all time (Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman) just made over 200million at the box office worldwide.  This example shows how over the past decade audience have become more sophisticated in their film preferences and demand more of an experience, an hour long film were the narrative ends when the film does is no longer enough for Morden audiences. Now the audience wants more franchises that last over a number of years to fulfil their needs. Another example to support this would be that to understand the avengers the audience would need to see films such as Iron man 3, this increases success for both franchises.  A franchise is always the same with a hint of new.

Franchises can also offer a ‘social experience’; the audience going to the cinema to see a franchise see it as an event, they will go with their friends who also enjoy the franchise, for example the franchise ‘Harry Potter’ was very popular in Cinema. Every time the next one was released the audience who enjoyed the first film would go with their other friends who enjoy the film.

The negatives of audiences and franchises are the lack of choice in cinema; most franchises are extremely repetitive and insult the audience’s intelligence. An example of this is the Spiderman trilogies. Two trilogies have been released in the past ten years both doing extremely well at the box office. Film studios keep giving or of the same and showing a lack of creativity, by releasing re makes studios are falling into a creative vacuum. Sometimes we are required to see two film