When does the marketing of a film begin? What date did ‘The Duchess’ open at cinemas in the UK? When do you think the first trailers hit cinemas?
When did the film open in selected theatres in the US? Why the difference? Why do you think it opened in the UK first?
The distributor
Look at the bottom of page 1. Put the 8 things a film distributor does into order of importance – try and explain why you’ve made the selection.
Box office
The 1996 film ‘The English Patient’ was released in the US on 6th November 1996 and opened on only 10 screens – taking $278,439 on the first weekend. Yet by the time the film opened in the UK on the 14th March 1997 it had taken $60,317,565 at the US box office. What might explain this? To give you a modern comparison ‘The Duchess’ opened on 7 screens taking $190,426 on its opening weekend.
Rentals
What are ‘rentals’?
Audience Research
What is the main source of audience research by distributors? Why do you think they chiefly use this?
Cast and crew
A ‘Bankable star’ is one of the ‘3 minimum ingredients to any film package’, the other two being a successful director and a script or a strong story IDEA. According to the magazine ‘Hollywood Reporter’ the top 10 bankable stars of 2006 were:
Tom Hanks
Tom Cruise
Jim Carrey
George Clooney
Russell Crowe
Johnny Depp
Nicole Kidman
Jude Law
Brad Pitt
Julia Roberts
Choose one of these stars and go to the Internet Movie Database http://www.imdb.com/
And look up their last 5 films – how much have the earned at the box office? Then look up their biography – you should be able to find out their salary for their films. Do you think they’re ‘worth’ so much per film?
Certificates
Read the additional ‘updated’ sheet about film classification and answer the questions under Activity 3.3.
Now complete the two Tasks at the top of page 5 of the main pack.
Film Prints
‘The Duchess’ opened on 426 Screens across the UK – how much would it cost just to supply the prints?
Unique Selling Point
Complete the Task on page 7 using appendix 1. What do you think the USP of ‘The Duchess’ is?
P & A
The ‘average’ Hollywood big budget film spends $34.4 million on P&A, while some films have spent more than $100 million. What percentage of the estimated Box Office income is the P&A budget?
What do you think the P&A budget of ‘The Duchess’ was in £s?
Look at page 8. Using Appendix 2 complete the Task.
Film sales
How many months in advance do films have to booked into cinemas?
