That man Epstein has written another interesting article, this time on Hollywood’s obsession with the teenage audience. Aside from the obvious, he also mentions that times are in fact good for the Hollywood studios despite all the doom and gloom of the box office being terrible and the end of cinema being heralded.
He notes that the big studios made $4.7 bn in the first nine months of the year, up from $4.5 bn last year. Their share of the American box office rose from 68 to 75%. Epstein then goes on to note that the lack of teen-friendly movies (or what he calls ‘amusement-park films for juveniles’) is what has caused a crisis in Hollywood this year, there were no big blockbusters for many of the studios, add a Spider-man 3 or a Shrek 3 and the box office picture would look a lot rosier.
Apparently, franchises are what all the studios are after, especially youth orientated ones as this enables merchandising and tie-ins, plus the fanatical devotion that you don’t usually find amongst adults. One of the benefits of having tie-in partners is their advertising budgets, which are becoming ever more important, especially the TV sector (which seems foolish as TV advertising is under serious threat from PVRs and downloads), and because teens can be relied on to watch a lot of TV and so be exposed to the advertising, hence why they’re targetted.
The recent release and box office rocketing by Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, a franchise Warner Bros. must be laughing all the way to the bank with, shows that the audience is still there if only the movies were.
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