How Important are Film Franchises to Producers and Audiences

 In today’s film industry, Hollywood operates on a horizontal integration business model. This means that films are now part of a much larger business model that includes earning revenue through multiple sources. This includes making toys, videogames, books, soundtracks and TV series spin offs based on the film itself. In this way, Studios don’t need to rely on the film itself being financial successful, as they could sell videogames and books to the fans for example, thus earning money from the same film. For this reason, film franchises have become more prevalent as a result of this business model – due to the fact that audiences are more likely to invest extra money outside of the price of admission in a film series and world that they are familiar with.

Film franchises are good for producers as produces can easily sell a new instalment of a franchise to the already existing audience. For example, somebody who enjoyed Star Wars will be more likely to spend money going to see Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back as the sequel will create the same enjoyment that they felt whilst watching the first Star Wars. One example of this is the financial success of Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens, the film has grossed over $1.7Billion worldwide by both running a massive marketing campaign and also appealing to pre-existing fans of the series. However, franchises are also beneficial to producers as it allows them to sell other products related to the film to the fans of the film – thus giving them another source of revenue aside from the Box Office. Film franchises are also important for producers as it allows them to essentially create free marketing by building up communities of fans. More often than not, fans of a film franchise will persuade their friends or acquaintances into watching the films and to join the community of fans. This creates marketing that the producers don’t need to pay for and can appeal to a massively wide audience as fans of the film will pitch the film to their friends personal tastes and preferences.

Another reason film franchises are good for a producer is because it allows them to maximise synergy. Rather than spending more money on creating new animations for a certain character or creating a setting in CGI, the team can simply reuse old assets during the production of the film. This both allows them to create more films more quickly, allowing them to create greater prophets on merchandise for that film, it also allows them to save money on the actual production of the film; thus reducing the risk and increasing the margin on the sales of the film.

However, a negative for producers is that the producer can earn a bad reputation if they do not do the franchise justice. This can also ruin the franchises chance of growing in the future as fans of the franchise may be ‘put off’ by an instalment in the franchise that does not do the world of the story justice. This means that producers are effectively gambling the success of their entire franchise on each film that they release, as any bad film could severely hinder the rest of the franchise. Another negative for producers is that it hinders the ability to create new franchises, as most people are only interested in whatever franchise they’re already invested in. This is because audience members may think that another fantasy film involving magic is simply “Harry Potter but with horses” for example, meaning that producers need to keep producing the same franchise in order to make money.

A positive for audiences regarding franchises is the fact that they have a constantly expanding world to be able to invest time into. For example the Star Wars franchise has a large expanded universe that is explored through books, videogames and TV spin offs. This allows the audience to continue the world of the film outside of the cinema by exploring different media platforms. The existence of a franchise and multiple films in a series also allows the audience to follow a long building story over the course of many films, meaning that each film in the franchise will have more anticipation than the last; meaning the audience may be more likely to enjoy the films as a result.

Another positive for audiences is that it builds communities surrounding a specific film franchise, this is has been amplified by the existence of Social Media and blogging/forum sites such as Reddit, Tumblr, Facebook and Instagram where fans can join together and share their appreciation of the franchise through sub-reddits, hashtags and pages that are dedicated to that specific franchise. This allows audience to feel as though they are part of something larger and allows them to enjoy the film more as a result as it may feel like a special event when a new movie comes out.

A negative for audiences is that franchises can become extremely repetitive, resulting in the audience becoming bored of said franchise and abandoning it. Producers are forced to create extremely similar films in each instalment of the franchise in order to please the fans that expect to see more of the same. However, this can backfire as audiences become bored of repetitive and formulaic franchise movies.

·      Massive marketing campaigns can be exhausting

·      Difficult to criticise massively loved franchises due to a fear of backlash from that franchises community