Box Office, The Gant Rule, Big 6

*Between The Film Cycle and Working Title A Short History*

Box office revenue comes from cinema chains.

The 20 highest grossing films, nearly all A-List stars or intellectual property, linking in to an existing audience that can be marketed to.

Charles Gant, box office analyst writing for The Guardian, set up The Gant Rule. 

Big hit films (a film is considered to be a hit when it makes at least 3 times its budget at the box office) will make ten times as much in dollars in US cinemas than it will in stirling.

The Big Six take this into account, so they will want to market towards that audience. This has utter dominance over the content of the films, including representation of social groups and issues, and the originality of its narrative.

As my main case study to show how companies owned by the Big 6 stick to this narrow representation I will use Working Title, a subsidiary of Universal, owned by conglomerate NBC-Universal which in turn is owned by Comcast.