Turn this into a slide share and apply. Comment on which genres are more commercially/critically appealing.
Key findings:
- Rom-com is a very commercially appealing genre.
- 1985 - First film released, My Beautiful Laundrette, on Channel 4, US box office of $2m
- 1987 - Wish You Were Here. US box office of $3m
- 1989 - The Tall Guy, first collaboration with Richard Curtis. First time US actor playing main character, but not A-List material.
- 1991 - Office in LA opened
- 1994 - Four Weddings And A Funeral, breakthrough hit on a budget of $2.5m
- 1999 - Notting Hill, company's trend for rom-coms with US A-List star continues
- 2000 - Billy Elliot, surprise hit with its social realist genre centring on working class characters, however it has a feelgood ending, which goes down well with US audiences
- 2001 - Bridget Jones's Diary - Intellectual Property of Helen Fielding's bestseller books with casting of Renee Zellweger
- 2003 - Love Actually, Working Title's landmark feelgood film, however not for the whole family, 15 rating
- 2004 - Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason.
- 2004 - First entry in the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy, Shaun Of The Dead, Zom Rom-Com
- 2007 - Hot Fuzz, second Cornetto film, plays well on the popularity of the cop buddy genre in the USA
- 2010 - Green Zone, prime example of the risk of the tentpole strategy and how purely relying on an A-List star doesn't always work. Flop due to concentrating, and also maybe unpopular due to the narrative of the Iraq War, and it missed out on the under 15 (mainly male) audience interested in war films. Just like with Warp's '71 flop, giving it a PG-13/12 rating might have lowered verisimilitude. (although was that the case with the 12-rated Bourne franchise?)
- 2013 - About Time. Rom-com written by Richard Curtis. Hybrid-hybrid, adding sci-fi time travel to the typical rom-com set-up with an American (female) A-Lister. However not as financially successful as other rom-coms, was Rachel McAdams. but stay still came in on budget. The extra time-traveling twist made evident in the trailer, playing on relatable audience experience of wanting to change stuff having gone wrong in past potential relationships plays well, supergenre
- 2013 - Les Miserables, mix of IP, high-profile stage musical, and an ensemble A-List cast Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway,plus supporting B-Listers like Helena Bombay Carter
- 2013 - World's End, final entry in the Cornetto Trilogy. Sci-Fi is making a comeback but maybe just missed it before Gravity coming out followed Interstellar, The Martian and the return of Star Wars to the big screen. But mainly, it's Genre was made unclear in the marketing, and the British pub culture which was given huge exposition in the trailer might well have been too alien for international especially US audiences, something Working Title usually tries to avoid in contrast to Warp.
- 2014 - The Theory Of Everything, Stephen Hawking like Queen Elizabeth and Victoria are huge "British" (do the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish like the Royal Family?) historical images, like Churchill in Darkest Hour.
- 2015 - The Danish Girl, a rare financially successful film about transgender films. However, like Brokeback Mountain, The Imitation Game, Freeheld, it's based in real-life events that lead to the death of te LGBT+ protagonist, representing them as members of society who are destined to die and
- 2016 - Hail, Caesar. Main factor A-List cast including George Clooney,
- 2016 - The Program. Example that Working Title don't always go for a full A-List cast and IP (can't always afford to) don't go full Blockbuster Strategy (Anita Elberse)
- 2016 - Bridget Jones franchise returns, Bridget Jones's Baby, $212m box office, but not as high as last two films due to lack of Hugh Grant and the cast being older, especially not dying Colin Firth's greying hair.
- Films for 2017: Baby Driver, Cornetto Trilogy director Edgar Wright directs a romance/action/car chase/music thriller flick, original storyline. No real A-List stars, banking on rising teenage star from The Fault In Our Stars. However with We Are Your Friends the casting of Zac Effron due to his High School Musical fame was proven misplaced, even though he had been the lead star, though their the comedy side of the rom-com was able, as well as the gross-out moments, dirty humour
- 2017 - Baby Driver, massive financial and critical success for original plot, overtakes Bridget Jones's Baby. Edgar Wright's first film set in the USA, if it had been set in the U.K. with British characters would it have been as successful?
RESUBMISSION HINDSIGHT
