State
reasons for the popularity of US films to a UK audience
The
main target audiences for many films within the UK is people between the ages
of 15-25, due to these being the people who have the most disposable income
willing to spend on going to the cinema. People within this age groups tend to
be more interested in Hollywood blockbuster films, rather than foreign or independent
films because Hollywood films are portrayed as more “popcorn movies” and don’t contain
many deep set issues or controversy, these types of films are watched more by
more middle class society and cultured people. And this who each of these films
tends to be targeted towards during the post-production stages of the film e.g.
Marketing.
The
marketing is a huge factor in the popularity for any film, in the case of
Hollywood films, many of them contain huge budgets with the marketing for them
in some cases being half of these multimillion dollar budgets. Marketing can
consist of teaser trailers and posters, tie-ins and social networking, with
huge amounts being spent on things like these with American films it helps to
create a “buzz” around the film and its release building the films popularity. Without
a strong advertising campaign from an US film then the production company is
already setting itself up for a fall, as with such large amount of money at
stake, without a large audience to watch the profits will not come rolling in.
This can be shown from Disney’s 2011 release of John Carter, this film had
difficulty raising an audience as the marketing companies changed half way
through resulting in uncertainty with any audience that may have already been
there. However, as a result of this, and obviously other factors, the film lost
over $160 million. Whereas the 2012 release of A Good Day To Die Hard which
opened up in the UK on Valentines day managed to take $16 million, due to a
highly anticipated release of the newest instalment of the franchise. This
shows that much of the popularity surrounding US films within the UK is due to
a high marketing budgets and more successful campaigns compared to foreign
language films which do not have the budget for large advertising UK campaigns
and so there is no knowledge of there release.
This
also brings out the point that the popularity for US films may in fact not come
from necessarily good US films, but because of the little awareness that people
have of other options, (such as British independent films or foreign language
films,) demographic inertia or even inability to go to see other forms of
movies. Nowadays it is not part of the
working class culture to visit an arts centre to watch a foreign language film,
with most of the UK population being working class has a huge impact on the
audiences for US films and foreign films. The working class are not necessarily
open to the change of going to visit an arts centre, which is more than likely
a much larger journey for them than the average multiplex cinema, and so tend
to stick with what they know and settle for US films shown in mainstream cinemas.
Personally, I think this is a huge factor on the popularity for US films, as
they are mainly all that are shown in the average cinema, and so, for families,
or 15-25 year olds for instance wanting to go spend an evening out watching a
new film, they are limited for choices between anything but American films and
so they go to see them anyway: increasing the demand for US film. This is an
endless cycle which, without changes to what does actually get shown in
mainstream cinemas, will we actually be able to see whether this is in fact the
case.
Although,
this is actually just personal opinion, and there are also many other reasons
which contribute to the high popularity of US films within the UK. Including the
roles of stars: the use of famous American stars such as Tom Hanks or even
Bruce Willis (usually in type cast roles) usually leads to a US films being
even more successful than usual due to audiences who will go and see that film
just to watch the star. US stars are the most well known across the world, so
with the use of them in US films automatically create popularity for the films
that cannot be achieved without them. Take for instance, comparing John Carter
and Die Hard 5, both American films, one with a massive global star (Die Hard
with Bruce Willis) and John Carter, with... Non. The difference as stated
before, meant a loss of $160 million for John Carter but $16 million for Die
Hard 5 in the UK box office alone.
And
so, it can be concluded that there are factors within the production and post
production stages of a US film which entice UK audiences and create the large
popularity that they have, but there are also more issues with society that
could in fact be behind this dominance of the UK cinema market that the US
blockbusters currently have.
