SSC Film Studies

How important are film franchises for audiences and producers?

Audiences now have the opportunity to ‘go on a journey’ with their favourite characters throughout the film sequel. For example, the Harry Potter films show Harry growing from a young adolescent struggling with bullies to eventually experiencing young love and love triangles. This allows the audience of the same age to relate to Harry’s situations, ensuring they feel a connection with the characters.

To meet the audience’s desires outside of the cinema there have been Harry Potter theme parks built and there are many entertaining games for every Potter Film made, expanding the audience even further. To many people a film release date of Harry Potter is a cultural event that brings society together. The social experience will be a national success with many screaming fans, making it impossible to void the new film.    

More over, the predictability of some films such as; Iron Man, is the base of the audiences expectations so they know they will enjoy future films (Iron Man 3). Iron Man 3 was a successful film proving that audiences can build relationships with the characters and enjoy seeing the same thing but bigger.

On the other hand, franchises can be seen as a negative for the audience and producers. Although audiences enjoy watching an Iron Man 2 and 3, the predictability is giving us less and less of a choice every year. The majority of films I researched from 2013 that were a hit in the box office were Franchises.  Evidently audiences are not receiving anything new, however when we are provided an intellectual challenge like Interstella it is a huge success. Interstella made an astonishing 2 million gross even though it was not a franchise.

The failure of the two Spiderman trilogies in the past ten years proves that audiences can get tired of repetitive marketing. Each spider man films gross declined more after every film. Some believe that the ridiculously remade spider man films insulted the audience’s intelligence and patronises their imagination.

Film Franchise can benefit the produces enormously. Successful franchises have been known to guarantee the producers profits many years after the films have been released. Although John Carter was a huge flop it did not jeopardise Disney studios as the studio had profits from many other films that were part of a franchise. If John Carter would have had a better marketing scheme the could possibly of been a success. Therefore, Franchises aim to perfect their marketing techniques. In order for a company to be cost efficient they tend to not rely on set.  For example, the extremely popular Saw films were produced from a low budget, with the only built set being the bathroom. The shooting budget was $700,000 and the shooting was on a tight schedule.

Sequel’s with a specific genre is a positive factor when producing film’s as you are able to deliver to the audience.  Synergies run the risk of individual film failure as then the franchise can’t successfully continue. Franchise failures can lose businesses a significant amount of money. The Theme parks and merchandises created in order to add to the films success will be a huge investment of money down the drain.