Thursday, February 19, 2009

The Business of Hollywood

In America on Film, Benshoff and Griffin describe the structure and history of Hollywood filmmaking; within the text they discuss the “Business of Hollywood” by introducing multiple concepts that create the framework that is “Showbiz” both today and in history. It has always been evident to me that Hollywood and film was a business, but until recently I had never realized how easy it actually is to look at Hollywood made films and break down their success formulas. I will discuss the business of Hollywood by looking at the concepts of profitability and cross promotion through the example of the “Batman Empire”.

The Batman rEVOLUTION!

Hollywood has been able to cultivate profit off of the concept of “Do what works.” Movie producers know to continue to do what has been done in the past by recycling concepts, characters, and even re-making entire movie series when the form has become outdated. This can be seen by looking at movies like the “Batman” series which some people would think started with Director Tim Burton and his 1989 release of “Batman”, however, in reality there had been a Batman movie released in 1966 which followed the television series, but even before that in 1943 the original Batman movie was released in a 13 part movie serial later followed by a 1949 sequel. It is also important to note that “Batman” was not a movie to start off with; the concept was brought to the film industry though another form of popular culture, Comic Strips.

The Batman Empire birthed from a single comic strip in 1938 has grown into a media franchise that has given birth to 10 theatrical releases; 6 direct to video releases; multiple live action television cameos; and even more animated feature presentations to include 5 animated series based solely on the character Batman.


It is almost too easy to see the producers of the Batman franchise have the profitability formula down very well with the recreation and distribution of just a single movie character. This brings me to my next concept of cross promotion within the Batman franchise and how it also directly correlates to profits. Businesses have come to realize the massive amount of consumers that are available to through each other’s networks and are able to utilize each other in order to gain further recognition and sales potentials. This can be seen in the Batman example by looking at how Batman uses OnStar as well as how Batman supports McDonalds.






Distribution is another key to the success of the Batman empire. Movie industries have been able to not only tap into the success of the American market, but the international market as well. In fact, the example of international distribution as well as cross promotion are seen where there is a Spanish version of Batman “iconization” through LEGO being marketed not in film, but in a video game.



Batman is just one example of how Hollywood over time has used a profit formula to make itself successful. It has done so through many genre's and series of films. (Rocky, Star Wars, The GodFather, Robin Hood...etc) But something else I feel needs to be addressed as well and that is the Independant Film Stlye. I am not talking about Independant films themselves, the real movies or documentaries that are submitted to the Sundance Film Festival or even the Fargo Film Festival for their "Focus of Film", but I am talking about what I will call Hollywoods exploitation of the Independant Film style by creating a Hollywood film based on the stylistic concepts of Independant film for profit based off of the recent trend of indy film popularity.

Movies such as Napolean Dynamite, Little Miss Sunshine, Resevoir Dogs, American History X are all movies that I feel would have made fine independant films but were brought into the limelight by the same types of formulas that create profit for large scale motion pictures.

Take example of Napolean Dynamite, it is an independant film that has a lot of the same concepts of Hollywood film. I use the example of the Vote for Pedro T-Shirt or the line of clothing that spurred into pop culture stores like Spencers or Hot Topic after its release. The movie was made emblematically like any other independent film with non-mainstream ideals and non-traditional cinemetography , however, it had the backing and production mind of Hollwood to drive its sucess.

Does this mean that profitability can only come from regurgitation of old worn out concepts becuase we know that repeated through history is the concept of "Do what you know works"?