Producers and Audiences Round Up

(A few case studies and notes to finish the producers and audiences off and act as back up for my essays)


Cowboys and Aliens
Budget: $163 million budget
Starring: Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig
Notes: Despite the budget and star presence, the film only took $174.8 million (around $11 million profit) and is therefore considered largely a finacial dissapointment.
The film was the second highest grossing film on its opening weekend (beaten by the Smurfs, a suprise to many critics who expected CAA to be the clear winner).
The film follows a world-wide trend that Western films are historically not popular, but CAA was expected to be different due to star presence and its cross-genre fusion of a western and sci-fi.
Based on a book of the same name, released in 2006.


Star Wars: Episode 4
Budget: $11 million (delays forced the budget up from $8 million)
Gross: $775 million
Star presence (at the time of release): Alec Guinness
Sci-fi films had previously seldom been successful; it was only with manned moon trips during the 70s that sci-fi became popular. This is shown with Lucas' failiure of sci-fi film THX 1138 but success of his american film American Graffiti.
Serious animation sci-fi has not yet proven commercially successful in the United States (i.e. Iron Giant and Titan A.E. all proving to be flops).


Avatar
Budget: Offically $237 million (unoffically budgeted at £310 million and $150 million for promotion)
Gross: $2.7 billion
Notes: Illegally downloaded 16.5 million times in 2010; the most pirated movie of that year. Lost an estimated $248.5 million through illegal downloading of DVDs alone (not including Blu-Ray or losses from box office takings).


The Dark Knight
Budget: $185 million
Gross: $1 billion
Notes: Media hype surrounding the film due to Heath Ledger's death cause a huge turn out for the film (the previous film made just about double on its original budget compared with this film which made over $1 billion gross).
See my previous piracy post and case study of TDK.



Paranormal Activity
Budget: $15,000
Gross: $193 Million
Notes: It is the most profitable film ever made, based on return on investment.
Originally an independent film.
Paramount Pictures bought the domestic rights to the film, and international rights to any sequels, for $350,000 USD. When the film was taken in by Paramount Pictures, several changes were made. Some scenes were cut, others added, and the original ending was scrapped, with two new endings being shot. The ending shown in theaters during the film's worldwide release is the only one of the three to feature visual effects, and it differs from the endings previously seen.
It was the above's purchase of the film that gave it such world wide success because of such wide-scale distribution that an independent film could never do. The film had originally been released to film festivals where Paramount staff noticed and picked up the film.
On October 3, it was reported that a total of 33 screenings in all 20 markets sold out and that the movie had made $500,000 domestically. A day later, Paramount announced that the film would have a full limited release in 40 markets, playing at all hours (including after-midnight showings). On October 6, Paramount announced that the movie would be released nationwide if the film got 1,000,000 "demands" on eventful.com. The full limited release of the film started on Friday, October 9. On October 10 the Eventful.com counter hit over 1,000,000 requests. Paramount announced soon after that the film would get a wide domestic release on Friday, October 16 and then expand to more theaters on the 23rd. By November, it was showing in locales worldwide.
Three sequels are being produced for the film. All these sequels have been produced on low budgest ($3-5 million) although these are increased budgets from the first film's original $15,000.
Paranormal Activity 3 created the "Tweet Your Scream" campaign on Twitter in preparation for the release.