SSC Film Studies

How important are film franchises for audiences and producers?

I think that franchises are important for audiences given the facts that, it has become clear that audiences now enjoy more demanding experiences, for example harry potter. Harry potter has had a consistently high box office rate because it requires commitment from the audience. A reason audiences are committing to films such as this is because they allow the character to develop as a person as the audience develop, say an eleven year old goes to watch the first harry potter film. He would be able to relate with this because it would show Harry struggling with the daily hassles of school life such as fitting in and bullying, as the eleven year old grows up so does Harry and when we get to the last few films Harry is a full grown teenager as would be the audience members so the daily hassles would now change to relationships and love triangles. Franchises also offer audiences experiences outside the cinema such as theme parks e.g. harry potter world and games, this gives the audience a chance to physically step into the Harry Potter universe and therefore making the experience more enjoyable. Because of the audiences dedication to the films, they can have expectations on new films based off of the old films, for Harry Potter we would expect to see him defeat Voldemort and if those expectations are not met the audience will be unsatisfied.

Others may disagree with me and think that franchises are negative for audiences given the fact that franchises are growing in number showing that there is becoming less and less variety of film for audiences, for example in 2013, thirteen of the highest grossing films where franchises and in 2014, 15 of the highest grossing films where franchises. On another point some say franchise films insult the intelligence of the audience, for example sequels are created assuming the audience will be happy with the remakes, but shown by the box office of the movie Interstellar, if the public, as an audience, are given more demanding films then the audience will watch them. All though franchises are demanding in the sense that they require commitment to be fully enjoyable, they do not make the audience think or challenge the audience, which is making them become stagnant, repetitive and boring.

For producers I believe that film franchises are very important, for the fact that no matter what if they have a successful franchise it could guarantee profits no matter what, for example, Marvels franchise, the avengers makes a lot of money, and if the two new films Ant Man and the new Fantastic Four movie lose money, marvel would still be making money because of the successful franchise The Avengers. Also studios can reduce costs by using sets and mise-en-scene for example it cost Marvel studios 12 million dollars to create the Hulk using CGI in the first movie, but they wouldn’t need to use this again therefore the next film would cost 12 million dollars less. Studios can also predict what audiences want based on their viewing habits and change films to meet the demands of the public for example the biggest film last year was the Transformers and when Transformers 3 comes out the biggest film of that year will be Transformers 3.

Others may believe that film franchises could be a negative for producers because producers run the risk of their franchises becoming stale, because the choices are being reduced which is starting to bore their audiences. Also franchises are risky to start with, they are expensive and if the franchise fails the studio could go out of business for example Newline studios made the Golden Compass and because this failed just like the Dungeons and Dragons film and the film “His Dark Materials” that makes up a 66% failure for Newline studios which meant they where vulnerable enough to be absorbed by Warner Brothers.  Another example is that if Avatar 2 fails then no one will want to go to the theme park and thus plummeting the income for FOX.