How important are Film Franchises to Audience and Producers?

Film franchises in Hollywood are important for audiences and produces as most of the efficiently thriving films including DC and Harry Potter; I will be using these two films as my examples. In my opinion I think these two films are two of the most successful franchises within the film studios along with many other films. Film franchises are successful for many reasons, such as the people are familiar with the film, and the comics, but the main one is Horizontal Integration which is where large company's merge into one large one to create a franchise.

Warner Bros is a good example of a Horizontally Integrated company as it is one of the biggest companies in the world. Warner Bros make about $35.000,000 a year on films and such alike. All the Harry Potter series made $2,390,073,877 in the Domestic Box Office which shows that it is quite a popular film series.

The most popular film Warner Bros has made is probably The Dark Knight – a DC Superhero film, it is still top of the charts even though it came out in 2008. The Dark Knight is the first film of the Batman trilogy; the total gross of the Dark Knight was $533,345,358 all together in the domestic box office sales. Warner Bros is owned by Time Warner which bought DC comics in March 1989, where the two companies merged together. In June of that year, the first Batman film was released.

 

The Batman Trilogy is another popular film series within the Warner Bros community; it is the fifth highest grossing film in America and has made a total of $1,900,844,295. The Batman film in 1989 was created by Tim Burton who is famously known for The Nightmare before Christmas (1993), Sweeny Todd and so many more great films. So, the audience will recognize the name and would have probably gone to see the Batman film because he was the creator.

 The sequel Batman Returns came out in 1995, five years after the first film. This would have created a source of tension within the audience as the first film of the trilogy was considered very popular, so the fans of the DC characters would have been exited to see the next Batman film, Schumacher directed Batman Forever with Val Kilmer as Batman, Schumacher also directed the 1997 sequel Batman and Robin with George Clooney starring. This film received poor reviews by critics and the fans. Warner Bros then restarted the film franchise in 2005 starting with Batman Begins which was directed by Christopher Nolan and which starred Christian Bale. Christopher Nolan also directed The Dark Knight (2008) and its sequel The Dark Knight Rises (2012).

 

The two sequels put together earned about $1 billion worldwide in the domestic box office, making the Batman series the second, the first one being Pirates of the Caribbean starring Johnny Depp which made more than $1 billion worldwide. The character Batman also appeared in multiple animated films, both as a featuring character and as a joint character. There was an animated series in 1993 called Batman: Mask of the Phantasm which was based on the original 1990’s Batman animated series.

 

I think film franchises are important for both audiences and produces as the franchise creates a bond between the two. The film franchise is important to the audience because it allows the audience to be involved to buy other things such as merchandise, comics ect. Film franchises are important to the producers as they create money if they’re a good franchise, but films don’t just make all the money anymore, other things like merchandise can be sold to create revenue.