How are franchises important to audiences and producers?

How Important Are Film Franchises To Producers and Audiences?

Franchises are important to audiences and producers as they allow for producers to re-invent the same material and still receive huge revenue from it, due to audience’s love of familiarity. Franchises also allow for companies to create different streams of income via toys, comics, novels and merchandise; this also allows for the creation of synergy.

Franchises have more positives than negatives when it comes to producers, franchises allow for the creation of a safety net. If a company releases a non-franchise film and it is a flop at the cinema, they can always rely on a franchise to boost their profits; take Disney as an example, in 2012 they released John Carter, a stand-alone film about a man stranded on Mars. But due to a lack of clear and precise marketing the plot was left unclear and in turn, audiences didn’t go to see it. Even with the losses from the Disney flop, the corporation still raked in one of the highest profits recorded. This is thanks to the release of Marvel’s The Avengers in the same year, a franchise that millions of people are familiar with. This links in to the idea that audience’s expectations are always, most likely, going to be met with films like this.

In mid 2010, Time Warner teamed up with universal studios to open a Harry Potter World in Florida USA, the opening of the park saw an increase of 2 million people attending Universal Studios compared to 2009. The park saw 11.2 million visitors; this was the parks highest visitor rate since 2004 and saw the quarterly profit quadruple from $30 million to $115 million. Harry Potter World also allowed for communities of fans to be built with hundreds of thousands of people making pilgrimages to universal studios. The opening of the park was added into the overall net worth of the Harry Potter franchise and totalled it at $15 billion. The horizontal integration of the Harry Potter franchise has allowed for audiences around the world to buy the Harry Potter story/characters on various platforms, the toy sales alone, as of 2015, stood at $7,307,500,000. As a result of Harry Potter audiences are able to buy Lego, wands, dolls and other items, based on various things from the Wizarding World. Time Warner were smart in their creation of Harry Potter World as it expands the universe for the audience and makes the story accessible outside the cinema.

**Negatives for the audience

** Negatives for producers

**Jurassic World case study

**2014 top ten table