How important are film franchises to producers and audiences?

I think film franchises are important to producers as franchises are really popular which mean success is almost always guaranteed.  In 2014 seven out of the top 10 highest global grossing movies were sequels. This tells us that franchises are globally successful. The latest instalment in the Transformer series featured Chinese stars as a lot of the film was shot in china. Using stars of different cultures helps to expand the audience globally.

Transformers: age of extinction was the first film to cross the $300m mark in china. It is even more important for Hollywood to recognize audiences outside of the US as 75% of the films are not from America. Certain franchises tend to be repetitive however form a producers point of view this is a good thing. This is because they know what the audience enjoys most. Spectre was the 24^th installment in the James Bond franchise. Although they are popular most of the James Bond films follow a similar structure. For another audience however this can get boring after a while.

Franchises use synergy to sell one brand many times. Sony owns the Spider-man franchise. From the original comic book by Stan Lee there has been 6 live actions films, novels, video games, musical, soundtracks, children’s books and cartoons. Sony itself owns Blu-ray, Columbia pictures, and SME records, and Sony Animated Studios. The first spider-man film was aired on CBS as a made for television film in 1977.This led to a short-lived weekly TV series. In 2002 Spider-man remerged as a blockbuster film staring Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker. The first film made $821.7 million just from the box office with a budget of $140 million. Because the film was so successful it generated two sequels in 2002 and 2007. A third sequel was planned for 2011 however disagreements between director Sam Raimi and Sony meant the project was cancelled. The film was rebooted in 2012 with Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker. The reboot had one sequel, which was successful however; this series was not continued so a new film could take place in the marvel cinematic universe. Tom Holland since replaced Garfield in the new Captain America: Civil War.

Film franchises now rely more on other resources for profit rather than what the film makes it. For example Walt Disney have there own resorts and theme parks. Fans of franchises such as Harry Potter are more likely to go and visit the park if they have a new harry potter theme park. Another way franchises make money is through consumer products. Spider-man has one of the largest ranges of products along with Disney. A lot of spider-man products are aimed at young children such as lunchboxes, cups, toys, costumes etc. However a lot of the children’s products are from various cartoon series of Spider-man. For older fans and collectors, products come from the 6 Spider-man films.

For producers film franchises are important as they make more money than individual, original films. However it is hard to build a franchise, which can cause monopolies. Walt Disney is a good example of a monopoly as they own Pixar, Walt Disney studios, Frozen, Marvel and also Star Wars. Owning so many popular franchises makes Disney become a monopoly, which means that smaller studios struggle to make as much money.