How important are film franchises to producers and audiences?

How important are film franchises for producers and audiences?

In Hollywood today, franchises play one of the biggest parts to a films success. They are extremely important as they allow the story to continue outside of the actual film. They engage an audience more in a variety of different ways through products outside of the film. “Hollywood studios love franchise films because they have a built-in awareness with audiences.”

Franchises benefit producers through the use of synergy. This is when the added value created when joining two separate firms allows a greater return than from the sum of the individual parts. This could be the same product being sold over and over again to the consumer, which creates larger revenue than the first individual product. Bringing that into context, News Corporation, who own 20^th Century Fox made The Simpsons Movie. The Simpsons movie took home a lifetime gross of $527 million worldwide. This enabled the franchise to grow through the distribution of merchandise and toy sales. These products took a gross sum of $4,725 Billion. This was done through selling toys of the characters in different forms over and over again to the Simpson’s audience, enabling larger revenue than the actual film. This leaves the question, is the first product the product the producers depend on when making the largest amounts of its money? It has clearly shown that the Simpsons movie made significantly less than what it sold outside of the film. However without the film all that revenue made would not exist because of it, this shows that without the first product, a domino effect of all these other products being made would not have been made possible.

Furthermore, if the franchise has been made from a trilogy of books, it opens up to a bigger audience who prefer the genre of the novels. Also the producers know that they have 3 secured films that they know will do well as the books have became so popular, making it a high demand to be seen on the big screen. If there is a high demand for a book to be seen on the big screen, this is a clear indication that the audience are willing to pay to see it guaranteeing a large some of money from ticket sales let alone products that come along with it.

However film franchises does have downfalls. Due to the popularity of franchises, it makes small room for indie films to be made. They have no fan base demanding the film, showing that it is a risk to take when producing an independent film.

From an audience perspective, a franchise is important as it gives the audience a sense of security. This is because they’ve seen what happens prior to the next film, building up expectations. The audience expectation would be met as they’re used to seeing the same characters and story over and over again. It also allows the audience to see their favourite film’s story develop visually, creating a relationship with characters. However, due to the fact that the same story is being shown again and again in different ways, it shows the audience repetition, not allowing them to be opened up to a wide variety of films and genres and potential films that can do good at the box-office, however not being enabled due to these large franchises.