8m trailer views just on the Focus Features channel alone by 26.8.20:
- $20m production; limited cinema release - $19.99 PVOD (NBCU keep higher % than box office)
- Co-production: WT/Perfect World - a Chinese co
- Leads aren't A-listers yet but features Ice Cube as antagonist
- Unfortunate hero's journey? White Dakota Johnson seeks to push out Ice Cube
- Zeitgeist/generic: riding on success of many recent music biz hits (Yesterday! A Star is Born)
- Real-world singer (like Yesterday) used on OST; vinyl release
- Feelgood ending/American dream (Billy Elliot...) - note the prominent Vogue quote: "perfect entertainment"
Scroll to the bottom for some sample paragraphs employing a range of terminology ... which will help with the crossword I've done on this film...
LINKS:
INDIEWIRE ANALYSE PVOD ECONOMICS
BOXOFFICEMOJO
WIKI
Official Website
WT page
BRITISH PRODUCTION BUT ... AMERICAN - Good example of how the British WT occasionally produce essentially American movies (see Wild Child for an eg of where they transplant an American protagonist to an English setting), eg Green Zone.
LOW/MID-BUDGET BUT A-LISTER - An impressive cast list for the reported $20m budget, notably Ice Cube, though the leading female actors Dakota Johnson and Tracee Ellis Ross are nowhere near such status
CHINA: UNIQUE DEAL WITH PERFECT WORLD - (Wiki:) At the start of 2016, Perfect World announced a long term co-financing deal with Universal Pictures, which represents the first time a Chinese company has directly invested in a multi-year slate deal with a major U.S. studio.[2]
PVOD HIT at $19.99 PRICING - Universal is joining Disney in an aggressive online strategy, taking a wrecking ball to the traditional release window which gives cinemas 2 months+ of exclusive distribution before any other medium or platform. Its premium VOD (PVOD) pricing of $19.99 has proven successful, and as they keep a much higher percentage of this take they can post high earnings with much smaller audiences than required from cinema runs. See IndieWire's analysis (I've summed it up below). The charts only track cinema box office, but by revenue Hight Note was #1! Also look at the presentation of the official website: dominated by links to streaming/retail sites.
FEELGOOD (FEMALE-CENTRED) VOGUE FLUFF - I spotted that they've heavily featured the phrase PERFECT ENTERTAINMENT from Vogue's review (in itself, very revealing that the woman's fashion mag is a key source). You can see a similar phrase heavily featured in the Yesterday campaign too, but in the case of High Note there's little doubt that Focus/Universal were making explicit the potential ESCAPISM (uses and gratifications alert!!!) during the covid crisis.
THREE QUADRANT?! You can make a case for four quadrant, but this is a female-centred ('chick flick' is the traditional, dismissive, term) production for sure. Clever combination of the veteran singer and hungry young assistant to bridge the age divide, and Ice Cube is an important element in probably weak, very much secondary, male appeal. And we can never dismiss the male gaze potential especially when conventionally glamorous young female actors are highlighted.
ZEITGEIST AND CLONING MUSIC BIZ HITS - The movie industry is notorious for jumping on any trend until audiences quickly tire of the glut (excess) of productions churned out. The major success of the Lady Gaga/Bradley Cooper music-biz flick A Star is Born (around 12 x its budget; see BoMojo), plus Yesterday (both of which come in the wake of based-on-true-stories Mamma Mia, Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocket Man, Straight Outta Compton etc) presumably helped the production get green lit and given a prominent push. The narrative device of the humble everyday assistant seeking fame (albeit using technical skill, subverting normativised gender representations - though the undertone of white privilege as she seeks to push out the Ice Cube producer character is less 'woke') has that talent show feel to it that Yesterday also strongly channeled.
MUSIC VIDEO/OST AS KEY MARKETING TOOL - WT are old hands at skilfully exploiting the potential of OSTs to market a movie. They occasionally get it wrong (I love The World's End OST, but its not that accessible for younger + non-UK audiences), but from the $10m spent on Yesterday's permission to use Beatles songs (then smartly re-recorded in the contemporary Sheeran/Capaldi style) to 2001's Bridget Jones' Diary (everything from a US country star to Geri Halliwell's post-Spice Girls solo launch, which intertextualised Fame) they usually get it right. And that's not to mention Baby Driver, which fully exploits the potential of soundtrack music to drive a movie and its editing style (as seen in some Tarantino classics like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction). I noted the prominence of the lyric video for the 'lead single' off the OST on IGTV (the video section of the Instagram page).
The OST is available on a wide range of streaming platforms (see NBCU's official page). As with Yesterday, the OST mostly features the film's actor (Tracee Ellis Ross) - see the tracklisting here (google store), and is also released on vinyl.
INDIEWIRE ON THE PVOD RELEASE STRATEGY
Drive-ins continue to lead grosses: IFC Films’ “The Wretched” is a standout success. That’s because IFC reports those drive-in numbers. Universal does not: they had the real #1 grosser for the eighth straight week (“The Invisible Man,” just ahead of “Trolls World Tour.”UNIVERSAL IS BUILDING ON THE HUGE SUCCESS OF TROLLS WORLD TOUR
...at-home movie-watching habits are evolving into a new normal. This weekend, Focus Features launched “The High Note” as a premium VOD release (along with a few theaters), which marks the second Universal theatrical title (after “Trolls World Tour”) to move to initial home viewing. Judd Apatow’s “The King of Staten Island” is next up on June 12.
THEY ALSO PURSUE A SELECTIVE PRICE REDUCTION STRATEGY TO BOOST RELEASES MONTHS INTO THEIR RUN
Universal is deftly maneuvering in the VOD space; the homevideo division finally lowered prices for premium-price titles “The Hunt” and “The Invisible Man” (which opened in theaters before swiftly moving to VOD), with upbeat results.
A REVENUE-BASED CHART PUT HIGH NOTE AT #1
Working Title’s music-world drama “The High Note,” directed by Nisha Gatrana and starring Dakota Johnson and Tracee Ellis Ross, is showing initial good results. Released last Friday, it ranks #2 at FandangoNow’s full week revenue-based chart, after only three days. That suggests that it was #1 for the weekend, even at a pricey $19.99 rental. Unlike “Scoob!” (Warner Bros.) and “Trolls World Tour” (Universal), this modest-budget studio PVOD release is the first original, not-franchise offering that’s not aimed at families.
FEWER VIEWERS STILL MEANS MORE PROFIT FOR UNIVERSAL
Because the film likely cost less than $20 million, “The High Note” will need a much lower return to see profit than the other two. It was scheduled as a May 8 theatrical release in 2,000 theaters. A rough guess is that it might have opened to around $8 million with an ultimate $25 million total. 1.25 million rentals during the premium stage would reach the same total, with a far higher return to Focus than from film rental. Again, Universal/Focus is learning on the go....
A TERMINOLOGY HEAVY PARAGRAPH OR TWO*... (*8!)
High Note is a movie that demonstrates just how deeply digitisation has impacted the film industry. The convergence between the web and film industries has seen NBCUniversal, like Disney, challenging the basic model with a cinema release window of around 2-3 months before other platforms. At $19.99, the stream/download is part of the emerging category of PVOD, premium video-on-demand. Total revenues may be lower than typical box office, but NBCUniversal retain a much higher percentage of this and are also developing their own subscription service, with the success of Disney+ making this an essential strategy for all of the big 5 (Warner Bros, NBCU, Paramount, Sony-Colombia, Disney).
NBCU have been pioneers in this regard, offering Prima for $35k installation and $500 for
any NBCU movie on theatrical release (see post).
Like Disney (who first tried this with Alice
in Wonderland – but quickly backed down), they have faced boycotts
from major
cinema chains like Odeon as a result, but have a partnership
with the AMC cinema
chain, one of America’s biggest. They established with Trolls World Tour that the PVOD route
is a viable alternative to the cinema-first model that has held for over
a century – a perfect example of the disruption that digitisation continues to bring
to the film industry, undermining traditional modes of distribution.
The production is just as notable as the distribution. NBCU’s
British subsidiary
Working Title produced the film, so straight away we see vertical integration at work.
The soundtrack coming out on a Universal subsidiary seems to suggest horizontal
integration too – but the two companies are no longer directly
linked! Just like Yesterday, it cast
an actual performer who recorded the OST, released on vinyl as well as multiple streaming
platforms, and CD for the pensioners! As we’ve also seen with WT’s Baby Driver, the music, including lyric
videos, was a significant part of the marketing campaign. Don't forget that YouTube videos are themselves monetised - YouTube, NOT Spotify, is by far the biggest platform for music streaming overall and especially for the youth audience.
As is so common within the film industry the film taps into
and recycles a recently successful range of movies centred on the music
industry, from multiple biopics like Rocket
Man to more American
dream-style little guy makes good efforts like Yesterday. It uses its light, escapist tone as a marketing tool for the primary female
audience, highlighting Vogue’s
“perfect entertainment!” quote across trailers, posters and social media
banners – an example of how the uses and gratifications theory can help us to
understand marketing strategy!
Unusually, this is not part of a franchise or linked to any major
IP
(intellectual property) like Les
Miserables, a classic example of exploiting globally famous brands/franchises.
With the Baby Driver sequel
due soon, Working Title have a good record of developing franchises. The
recent Johnny English Strikes Again (2018)
brought that
franchise’s take to $0.5bn, slightly lower than the Bridget Jones trilogy. Nanny
MacPhee and Elizabeth are among
many more they’ve developed.
The casting is also interesting. The two leads
are nowhere near A-list status – with a $20m budget that would be difficult
to achieve. However, the casting of Ice Cube as the antagonist adds some A-list
appeal, and broadens
the audience base, even if male appeal is very much as a secondary
audience – this is no four quadrant film or campaign. As with so
many Working Title productions, especially those linked to writer-director
Richard Curtis (not involved in this film), there are representation
issues. On the plus side we have female protagonists plus a female director of Indian descent,
something that might please the actor/campaigner Geena
Davis! I haven’t seen it yet, but assume it would pass the Bechdel Test (must feature two
females given names who talk to each other about something other than men)?!
The white hero’s
journey here (Campbell), the quest for the Proppian archetype of the hero
to achieve, is to topple the black producer (Ice Cube). So, some positives on
gender, but not so ‘woke’ on race, with a disappointing racial
stereotype?
Working Title have been reduced to a ‘first look’ deal now, so its
not guaranteed that their conglomerate parent company NBCU will pick up
their projects for financing or distribution – as Baby Driver (Sony-Colombia) showed. Its
another co-production
credit that merits attention though. Yes, this is a ‘British’ production that’s
essentially an American film – but Universal have also signed a deal with China’s
Perfect Films, and this is the first result of that (so far) unique
partnership. China is the world’s second biggest film market after
the USA. The
‘Gant rule’ (a typical Hollywood hit will gross x10 its UK take
in the US) helps explain why a British firm makes American-set films like this
and Baby Driver – that needs
developing to add a China figure (not so far behind and growing).
So, is this a typical Working Title production? Essentially,
yes: a major US star with global appeal (Ice Cube’s Friday films were especially successful with African-Americans); a commercial
genre and US-friendly feelgood ending reflecting the ‘American dream’
ideology; medium-level budget (high for the UK); big 5 distribution;
smart use of the marketing potential of the OST; a low age rating (BBFC 12); some contentious
elements of representation
(alongside some positives); a co-production (but the China link is unique).
Where things are different are more in the realm of distribution, with the PVOD-first
model.
NOW...TRY THE CROSSWORD!
The embed isn't great! Here's the link.
... short one.
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