Rebecca Watson Target Audience Media AS Studies

Our chosen film opening is based around zombies. We need to understand the profit that can be made out of making this film genre. Therefore we are going to be looking at several different websites such as ‘Box Office Mojo’ and ‘The Numbers’.

From this data we can see that the most successful film is World War Z, to which accumulated a staggering $202,359,711 in 3,607 theatres. This clearly demonstrates how popular the zombie genre is in relation to making a substantial amount of profit. The second most popular zombie film is Hotel Transylvania. This film also made a substantial amount when shown in 3,375 different theatres, making a grand total of $148,313,048. Through these high rating films it allows us to differentiate between different types of zombie films as World War Z is a somewhat more serious film whereas Hotel Transylvania is a cartoon and hence includes a lot of comedy. The third film also includes comedy into its storyline. Zombieland, when shown in 3,171 theatres made a gross profit of $75,590,286. Although this isn’t as substantial as the previous two films, we can still see that this hybrid genre is popular with the UK public. The forth film is Warm Bodies which embraces the idea of a zombie apocalypse, and when shown it produced $66,380,662 in gross profit, it was shown across 3,009 theatres. This shows that the film is still profitable even when including such a diverse genre mix. The firth ranking film is Resident Evil: Afterlife, which made $60,128,566 when shown in 3,209 theatres. From analysing these five films, we can see that over the past few years the zombie genre has proven to be popular with the UK public. This tells us that our film opening could be popular as it can appeal to a wide range of audiences.

Rebecca Watson Target Audience Media AS Studies

World War Z is the highest grossing zombie film in 2015. It was a very popular zombie film in 2013, when it came out. Because of how popular it is, or was, it shows us that there is a wide audience for the film, and added with the secondary data on demographics, it shows us that there is a mainstream audience. The iMDb website showed us that the film was fairly high budget, as the setting in the background looks fairly vast – they would have to pay a lots of money to hire, rent or buy that land. Also, it shows us that Brad Pitt was the main actor, this also signifies that the film was high budget, Brad Pitt is a Hollywood blockbuster action hero, he is very famous which, in turn means that he is a very high-paid actor. The rating on this film shows that it was clearly liked by about ¾ of the people who watched it. This means that it was very successful, and in turn shows that zombie movies can be very successful.

Rebecca Watson Target Audience Media AS Studies

Although this film received a higher star rating then World War Z it is also a hybrid of three genres which is what may have given it the extra 0.1 higher than the previous film. Additionally, the films cast includes a popular actor, Adam Sandler, through the use of such a well-known and iconic actor it makes the film more appealing for the audience and hence more profitable. Not only this but because of the film being made collectively of the Animation, Comedy and Family genres man that the film will appear to a much wider audience in comparison to other films such as World war Z to which only use one.

Rebecca Watson Target Audience Media AS Studies

The film Zombie land has in-fact the highest rating out of all three of the films as it has received a rating of 7.7/10. Like Hotel Transylvania this film also stars a popular actor Jesse Eisenberg, this could pose as a possible reason as to the film’s success. The film is also made of a hybrid of genres, Adventure, comedy and horror which although is unusual, it clearly works well. Although this film is also rated a 15like World War which limits its audience, but is still one of the highest rated films.