Friday 11 March 2016

Working Title VS Warp Version 3

When looking at the production company, Working Title, we know that they are a company that produce most Rom-Com's, whereas a company such as Warp, focuses more on the social realist genre. We can see this in movies such as "This is England" and "Mickybo & Me". 

Another film from Warp, which is social realist genre and shows the hard life of an immigrant is the movie "She, a Chinese". The film is about a young girl, Mei, who is a Chinese immigrant, after escaping her provincial Chinese village and immigrating into Britain. 


The entire movie is in Chinese and is therefore not very appealing to a wide audience and would never be able to achieve a wide release. First of all, because there wouldn't be many people who wanted to watch a movie in Chinese and second of all because there are no famous actors in the movie. This movie came out in 2010 and didn't have a main cinema screening and it didn't make that much money. The income it made came from it's DVD and VOD release. 
In this case, the Gant Rule isn't applied, because it did not have any success in Britain and therefore didn't have any success in other countries either. The Gant Rule suggest that if a film is a success in Britain it will make 10x more money in the US and have 10x the amount of screenings if not more. A great example of a British movie that achieved this, is the one from Billy Elliot. The reason, why this movie got so much attention and was a great example of approving the Gant Rule, is because it is about the great American Dream of a young boy. This appeals to a global audience and especially  a wide American audience and therefore it had such a great success.  

Had this been a Working Title movie on the other hand, it would have been done in a completely different way. Working Title always do a more commercial approach in terms of how they distribute their film, how they produce their film and, which cast they choose. 
Due to this, "She, a Chinese", would first of all have been in English, secondly it would have contained at least one American actor or actress and lastly it would have been distributed in very big amounts everywhere, in order for it to be successful and get a lot of screenings. 

As an example, Bridget Jones' Diary was distributed all over the world. Rennee Zellweger's two co-actors, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, are both Britsh, whereas Zellweger is American. 
In terms of distribution, the movie was distributed in a different way from country to country.


In France, as an example, the movie was advertised with this poster, where Zellweger is on it without her co-stars. This was done, because she is one of the big American stars and everyone in France would know her, whereas at that time, only a few would know Colin Firth and Hugh Grant. 









However, in Britain, the movie was advertised with all three actors on it, because both Hugh Grant and Colin Firth are considered as big stars in Britain.

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