BOX OFFICE: Gant Rule in 2016

IN THIS POST:
A definition of 'the Gant Rule'; testing it out with the summer 2016 UK/US box office; why is this so profoundly significant for understanding the British cinema market; how satirical cartoon Curtisland illustrates this; why does it not always work (including Bridget Jones example).

I was surprised just now to find that 'the Gant Rule' doesn't bring up many relevant hits ... until the phrase 'box office' is added to the search.

Lets have a fresh look at this...

A SHORT DEFINITION OF 'THE GANT RULE'*
Box office analyst Charles Gant (who has a weekly Guardian column, but whose writing appears in many other publications worldwide) has long argued that a typical transatlantic hit (a success in both the UK and US markets) will make ten times as much in the US ($ figures) as in the UK (unadjusted £ figures).

In short, for a UK/US hit, UK £box office x10 roughly = US $box office

*it is highly advisable to put such terms in '' to help denote them as technical terms; the media world is so vast and complex, no single examiner will be familiar with every conceivable term

Is he right? Usually, yes!

READ MORE:
I have blogged on this a few times...
Use the Gant Rule tag to find previous posts - or simply make your own comparisons with films' UK/US box office!

TESTING THE GANT RULE: SUMMER 2016 UK v US BOX OFFICE

 Captain America: Civil War + The Secret Life of Pets examples

Using figures from his ScreenDaily column, Gant looked at the 2016 summer box office on both sides of the Atlantic. Jump straight to the number one hit and you'll see a prime example of the Gant Rule in effect: Captain America: Civil War took £37m in the UK and $407m in the US. That's precisely x11 the UK figure - pretty accurate forecasting there!

AUDIENCE ANALYSIS Star Trek fails to live long and prosper?

This post focuses on the LA Times' box office coverage, which provides very specific audience breakdown and analysis.

The headline above is from Gant's column on the UK box office, matching a more common downbeat view on the film's fortunes and prospects (its still on wide release), noting:

Star Trek Beyond may have suffered from director JJ Abrams’ exit into rival franchise Star Wars (he remains as producer). Or fans might have been more excited by Benedict Cumberbatch as the main villain last time around, with Beyond baddie Idris Elba less proven at the box office. And Paramount may have struggled to persuade broader audiences to see a third Star Trek film.

Critics and audiences have been highly positive, but the film has failed to crossover to a wide US or UK audience (RT)

BoxOfficeMojo provide a comparison of all 13 movies in the franchise; the current release needs a major boost from China and elsewhere to ensure the franchise will continue to ... live long and prosper

The various box office columns (global, US, UK) in the Guardian make for great reading and will teach you a lot about how the industry works, and provide very specific examples that might help you in exam and/or coursework efforts. Variety and many others also provide in-depth, highly informed analysis and commentary - you can keep an eye on these by adding RSS feeds to your own blogs.

This example is from the LA Times, which you'd expect to be highly versed in industry practice as Hollywood is in its turf. The fragment I picked out below comments on:

Gant Rule, British exceptions and the China factor

UK box office of $60m rivalled the US ('domestic') take

Cinema is at once BOTH a highly globalised industry utterly dominated by the big six US conglomerates AND a highly localised industry in which local stars, settings, even IP/cultural reference points, sell.

The Gant Rule is a useful means of explaining the US dominance, even as this is swiftly undermined by the surging scale and value of the Chinese market, pushing the typical US box office share of a typical global hit to well below the traditional 50%+ (closer now to 40% and falling). This has seen Hollywood squeeze in Chinese stars and settings, shoot alternative endings and extra scenes for different markets, buy up or partner with Chinese firms (with the complication of strict Chinese laws on exporting money), and generally be more sensitive about portraying Chinese as villains or simply the traditional crass stereotype of inscrutable, unemotional, indistinguishable masses (not that this has entirely disappeared).

Headline from  The Wrap

Universal spent millions altering the plot of World War Z (reshoots) so that the epidemic didn't start in China in a doomed attempt to get into the Chinese market. Censors there frown upon horror ('The country has strict laws outlawing any movies that deal with magic, horror or superstition.'). China limits the number of non-Chinese productions allowed in cinemas to just 34 a year - though this may rise in 2017 following negotiations with the WTO (World Trade Organisation). It is not making it easy for Hollywood to extend its global dominance:

...in other cases studios don’t alter their movies until post-production. Chinese censors cut large chunks out of several movies released last year, including 40 minutes from “Cloud Atlas” and 12 minutes from “Men in Black 3,” excising all scenes in Chinatown.
They also cut parts of the latest James Bond film, “Skyfall,” including a scene that featured the assassination of a nameless Chinese security guard.

Marvel had initially planned “Iron Man 3” as a Chinese co-production, a tactic that has been taken with films like “Looper” and “The Karate Kid,” in part because co-productions are not subject to China’s quota for imported films. Chinese censors must still approve them. [The Wrap]

Just 20 years ago China banned all foreign cinema:

China only opened its market to the Hollywood studios in 1994, when its own film industry had reached its nadir. “It wasn’t out of admiration for Hollywood but to save the Chinese film industry,” Rosen said. “People weren’t going to the movies.”
At the time, China only permitted 10 foreign movies to screen, then increased it to 20 before the current total of 34. Those additional 14 slots are all reserved for IMAX or 3D films. [The Wrap]

There is no questioning the ongoing utter dominance of the UK market by Hollywood - for figures read the annual BFI reports. BUT ... localised content still often retains an edge.

The US star helped market the film globally, but the British setting did not help US box office: boxofficemojo.

Localised here is a very broad concept - as is the legal definition of 'British production' for tax purposes:

The UK box office has consistently punched above its weight with family films adapted from British-authored material, fromCharlie and the Chocolate Factory (£37.8m) and Alice in Wonderland (£42.5m) toThe Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (£44.4m) and, of course, Paddington (£38m).

These are mainly Hollywood productions, but with enough of a lingering element of Britishness to give them a home market boost, and so undermine the Gant rule. The Bridget Jones franchise is a more direct example, although it too is ultimately Hollywood fare (Brit producer WT being an NBC-U subsidiary, Polygram at the time of the original).

Gant's latest box office column highlights The BFG as the latest to benefit from this element of Britishness.

He also noted the latest example of event cinema, an annual classical concert now programmed in an incredible 534 screens, plus a stylized limited re-release earning more than the original run:

Also flying the flag for event cinema was Secret Cinema’s presentation of Dirty Dancing. ...  The run of just six dates delivered a final box office of £1.90m. That’s more than the combined runs of the original 1987 release (£1.62m) and the 20th-anniversary rerelease in 2007 (£224,000).

The BFG towers over UK box office while Star Trek Beyond fails to prosper.

A little bit more on the rising influence of the Chinese market, from an article which looks at directors outraged by remakes of their movies, in this case Red Dawn. The original 1980s flick saw Russians invade a US town, the recent remake swapped Chinese forces for this...until it dawned on the money men that they'd lose out on the Chinese market...so this was belatedly switched to North Korean forces:

Milius was partially vindicated when MGMchanged the invading aggressors to North Koreans for the final cut, though that move was made to appease the lucrative Chinese market more than to cheer up the original film’s director.

How dare you remake my classic! When directors attack

http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2016/sep/16/how-dare-you-remake-my-classic-when-directors-attack?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

DISTRIBUTION What is a 'wide' release?

Up against the continuing might of animated sequel Kung Fu Panda 3, as well as fellow debutants including romantic drama The Choice and horror-comedy Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the 50s-set tale of a major film star gone missing scored just $11.4m (£7.9m) to open in second place. The Coen brothers’ previous lowest bow for a film in wide release – usually estimated at around 2,000 cinemas – was the $12.5m taken by 2003’s Intolerable Cruelty in North America. [Ben Child's US box office column]

The UK equivalent would be around 150-200.


A big risk/investment in short!

Whilst digital copies reduce the distribution cost to near zero, physical prints (costing around $10k apiece) remain the norm for now, with the cost of prints AND marketing generally matching the production as a rough rule of thumb. The $250m Avatar (estimates vary as to the actual budget) was well over $500m in costs once distribution (a simultaneous worldwide release meant an exceptional number of prints) and marketing costs are considered.

Wide release means the majority of cinemas in a territory will be showing your film on at least one screen. In the US that means around 2,000-4000+, in the UK around 300-600+ (the Gant Rule applies here to an extent: as well as the box office the theatre count is likely to be around x10 for the US).

You can see this from various Working Title films - although, being British, they often enjoy high popularity in the UK.

THE GANT RULE APPLIED...
Does it work with these charts?

Gant argues that most UK hits make 1/10 (ignoring currency values) of a US hit (roughly!)...

THE REVENANT: UK £12m, US $140m ... so, roughly, yes!
STAR WARS THE FORCE AWAKENS: UK £120m, US $900m ... roughly, yes!

See 'Gant rule' tag on this blog for more...

The BoxOfficeMojo chart.

From Gant's weekly column.

...

WORKING TITLE new strategy with top two in UK box office

As I've frequently said, you can learn a lot by following box office analyses such as The Guardian's regular series.

The headline story today* is the incredible achievement of Working Title in having the top two films in the UK this week - US studios may easily manage marketing multiple movies at a time, but its rare to see this from a British company (albeit a studio subsidiary).

The benefits of their vertically integrated relationship with NBC-U are apparent, with distribution either directly through Universal or another of its subsidiaries, StudioCanal - described here as an Indie, which it has long ceased to be.

*Charles Gant's weekly, must-read, column: Peak performance: Everest climbs to the top of UK box office. Below: quotes from this, followed by bullet points on what you can learn from this.

[EXCERPT1] UK production company Working Title occupies the top two slots in the chart, with Everest and Legend. There may have been some disquiet at the company over distributors Universal and StudioCanal dating the films for release just one week apart, but both are successfully coexisting in the market. Despite a diverse portfolio of titles, Working Title was for many years defined by its Richard Curtis-scripted comedy smashes, but the success of Everest and Legend – following on from The Theory of Everything in January and Rush in 2013 – should finally redefine perceptions.

KEY POINTS IN BRIEF1:

• its extremely unusual for a BRITISH company to have the top two box office films
• each with a different distributor (though SC is owned by NBC-U)
• WT's reputation has been based on rom-com hits, but a more serious, drama-centred approach is emerging (making it more like Warp, a point not made in the article). Here's a screenshot of their movies since 2012 - About Time is the only Richard Curtis rom-com:

[EXCERPT2] First place: Everest
Everest had been in development for more than a decade before cameras rolled in 2014 with Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur at the helm; in 2004, Stephen Daldry had gone to Everest to film background shots. The true story of a notorious climbing disaster in May 1996 – the subject of Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air and other published accounts – the 12A-certificate film is targeted broadly, with significant presentation in 3D and Imax. A handy £658,000 in previews boosted the opening total to £3.16m. Comparisons are tricky, since climbing disaster films are rare. Fictional feature Vertical Limit (2001) kicked off with £1.9m, or about £3m when adjusted for ticket-price inflation. Cliffhanger (1993) began with £1.35m.

KEY POINTS IN BRIEF2:

• Everest is another in a recent line of WT serious dramas
• its not a 'tentpole' but is taking the four quadrant approach, seeking male, female, young and older audiences - the 12A is key to this strategy
• releasing on IMAX and 3D formats is also driving this four quadrant strategy - these push up production costs considerably, but are also key to the wider cinema industry's fightback against the rise of high quality home cinema
• there have been comparable movies, but Everest is taking in much higher box office

[EXCERPT3] Everest is the eighth No 1 hit for Universal this year, following The Theory of Everything, Fifty Shades of Grey, Fast & Furious 7, Pitch Perfect 2, Jurassic World, Minions and Straight Outta Compton. Universal, together with Fox (six chart toppers) and Disney (five) have dominated the box office this year. Warners, Paramount and Sony have had four No 1s between them; indie StudioCanal scored last week with Legend.

KEY POINTS IN BRIEF3: 

• after mixed fortunes in recent years, Universal is 2015's leading distributor (the dominance of American, specifically 'big six', vertically integrated distributors continues in the British market and globally)
• StudioCanal is misleadingly labelled an Indie here: its a subsidiary of NBC-U, and you'll see it listed on many Warp and WT films (previously named Optimum Releasing)

Above + below: Screenshots from Amazon Prime's 'Hidden Gems' list: StudioCanal is seen as a distributor of alternative, not so mainstream films: 21/36 films on this list are distributed by SC. Several of these 'hidden gems' are Warp Films productions, a fair description as they tend to get very limited marketing and so pass under the radar. Until now, YOU probably haven't heard of most of their films! Note the typically high (for Warp) BBFC certs from this small sample: 18 (Tyr, Kill List) and 15 (Sub); a similar sample of WT films would more likely be 12/15.

[EXCERPT4] Second place: Legend
Despite pretty decent weather at the weekend, Legend fell by a relatively gentle 34% in its second frame, delivering a 12-day tally just short of £10m. Legend’s total is just ahead of Tom Hardy’s other big 2015 hit, Mad Max: Fury Road, at the same stage of its run, after two weekends of play. The success of Fury Road rested on an appetite for a high-profile franchise revival, whereas Hardy’s dual performance as Ronnie and Reggie Kray is Legend’s chief selling point.
Until a year ago, StudioCanal had scored only two £10m-plus hits – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) and Rush. In the past 12 months, that tally has risen to six, with the release of The Imitation Game, Paddington, Shaun the Sheep Movie and now Legend, which crossed £10m on Monday. As for Hardy, his biggest hits have been in supporting roles in blockbusters such as The Dark Knight Rises and Inception. Fury Road was his first lead role to pass £10m in the UK, and Legend is his second, making 2015 a significant turning point for the actor. Legend will soon be nudging the top 20 18-certificate films of all time in the UK, a list led by Fifty Shades of Grey, Gone Girl and The Wolf of Wall Street.

KEY POINTS IN BRIEF4: 

• no matter how good the marketing campaign, factors such as weather can determine a film's fortunes. Also:
• Distributors look carefully at what competition they might face in any given release window (not unlike TV schedulers)
• most major movies make the highest amount of box office in the opening weekend and 1st week of release, with the take usually sharply falling from there; the marketing spend is focussed on that opening (there are exceptions: Warp's Four Lions had its number of prints doubled (from 115 to 230) after a surprisingly successful opening week)
• typical WT production strategy: including an A-list star to help sell the movie in the US and the wider world; they don't rely on UK box office (Warp largely do)
• StudioCanal typically distribute lower budget, often Indie (eg Warp) films, but since summer 2014 have had FIVE films grossing over £10m in the UK (a figure few films hit), having had only ONE before then (WT's TTSSpy in 2011)
• 18-rated films rarely make as much as 12/15-rated films as 1 of the 4 quadrants (youth) are ruled out; Legend is a fairly rare example of a WT 18-rated film (most Warp are 15 or 18 by contrast) but will be at least one of the top 20 highest grossing 18s in UK history

[EXCERPT5] Top 10 films, 18-20 September
1. Everest, £3,160,154 from 567 sites (new)
2. Legend, £2,446,860 from 544 sites. Total: £9,972,511

KEY POINTS IN BRIEF5:

• a British production company having the top two is unheard of; US production dominates the UK market 
• a UK hit will be on 300-550 screens; a US hit 3,000-5,000 screens

DETAILS OF TASK BELOW

CONVERGENCE Working Title TV

IN THIS POST: This links into several posts on convergence and ownership issues, and explores just how converged a company WT really is ... and the influence of ownership on this. I briefly raise points discussed in detail in previous posts.

Screenshot of the Wiki.

WHAT THIS WIKI SCREENSHOT TELLS US...
Great academic research, eh?!
This tells us three key things before we consider more recent developments:

Gant Rule example 2015: Into the Woods

It doesn't work absolutely precisely, but the general principle can be clearly seen...
Into the Woods (Rob Marshall, 2014)
$50m budget, global box office by end January 2015: $165m. US box office: $125m. UK box office: £7.3m.
IMDB; the-Numbers; BoxOfficeMojo; Wiki; Charles Gant's UK column late January 2015; Ben Child's US box office analysis;

There is a greater multiple than x10 when comparing US and UK box office, but the general point of the vastly larger scale can be seen. There may seem a bit of a mystery then as to why there is less than x10 the screens, but this reflects the much higher ticket prices typically charged in the US (2800 screens v 500). The film is unusual in one regard though: around 75% of the global take is from the USA alone; this has been typically around 50%, but recently has been declining to nearer 40% as China's cinema industry in particular grows in scale.

Comparing WT's Wild Child with Warp's Submarine

There are links lists for both companies on this blog!!!

Some useful links for each film:

WILD CHILD:
IMDB page (for rating, budget, some box office data, cast etc);
Wiki;
RottenTomatoes.com (for reviews and ratings);
Trailer (look for it in this playlist);










 
SUBMARINE:
IMDB page (for rating, budget, some box office data, cast etc);
Wiki;
RottenTomatoes.com (for reviews and ratings);
Trailer (look for it in this playlist);














SOME FACTS ABOUT THE FILM INDUSTRY YOU COULD CONSIDER:

1. NO film 'grossed' (took in from total cinema ticket sales) over £50m in 2013
2. Only TWO of the top THIRTY UK cinema box office hits of 2013 were British, including Les Miserables which is only marginally 'British'
3. The rest are American!
4. The combined cinema takings (box office) of all films released in the UK in 2013 was £1.17bn - its a big business!
5. Of the current top ten at the UK box office, only THREE have made over £10m since their release
6. If a film is budgeted over £10m, it almost certainly needs to include factors which will help it appeal to audiences in the US and elsewhere outside of the UK
7. The 'Gant rule' (which is generally fairly accurate!) states that a US box office hit will make around 10 times as much money as a UK box office hit
8. You can generally multiply the number of screens by 10 too!
9. As Disney's $250m mega-flop John Carter showed, there are NO guarantees in the film business, no matter how many stars or how much money you throw at a film - especially if the marketing is as messed up as it was for this film!
10. However ... as 2008's £10m budget Slumdog Millionaire showed, you can sometimes make serious box office despite picking unpopular genres, unknown cast and unlikely settings!

Surprised to find this...

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