Audience Figure Research

For this task we are going to research into audience figures and popular films of our chosen genre which is action. We are doing this research to see what type of action films are the most successful and therefore this will hopefully give us some ideas that we can put towards our film opening to make it better. Using popular action films as a resource is a good way of seeing what audiences like about action films which will help us to decide what content to include in our film opening.

Audience Figures

Since 1997, action has been the third most popular genre below adventure and comedy, with around 820 movies released and a total box office of $37. Also in our questionnaire, for the question on favourite genres, action got 5 votes so it came 2nd in order of the most popular, alongside horror and sci fi. A lot of people are into watching action films which I believe is because they can be related to real life. For example if a film is set in a well known location, if someone who watches the film visits the location they will be reminded of the film they watched. We decided to go with action as our genre for our film opening because it is a popular genre and we have lots of ideas in mind on how we can create a good film opening with intriguing content that is linked to action.

Popular action films

1) Avengers (2012) - This is a superhero film produced by Marvel and distributed by Disney. Avengers was the fastest film to reach $200m in 3 days, it had 94% positive reviews, and it had the biggest domestic opening weekend of all time. Looking at the audience for this film 50% of them were over 25 and 50% were under 25. This shows that this film was drawn at a wide range of ages at an even amount making it suitable no matter how old you are. 60% of the audience were male and 40% were female showing that the film was mainly drawn to males which is stereotypically true towards the genre of action. And finally 55% were couples, 24% were family, 21% were teens.

2) Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015) - This is a spy film produced by Skydance Productions and distributed by Paramount Pictures. On the films opening weekend, it sold better than expected with $56m in North America and overall it made a world wide box office of $700m. It also has a 93% of positive reviews. Looking at the type of audience that was drawn to it, 62% of them were males. Therefore, stereotypically this shows that more males are into action films than females. I have noticed that in most action films, the main character(s) are male which may be why more men are interested in watching them. Also more than 80% of the ticket buyers were older than 25, which shows that this film drew in an older audience. I believe this may be the case because Mission Impossible is a franchise, so as there were 4 previous movies, the older generations would have seen these when they were younger and therefore will want to watch the newer films when they come out.

3) Taken (2008) - This is a drama-action film produced by EuropaCorp and was distributed by 20th Century Fox. The film had a rating of 58% positive reviews. I believe that it was quite low because of the films content which can be categorised as quite ethical. It is the first of a 3 film franchise in which they were all successful films. Taken grossed a worldwide total of $226.8m against a production budget of $25m making it extremely successful towards how much funding they made. I think that this film was so popular because of how in depth the narrative is. It is an interesting film which will cause people to talk about it and by word of mouth it will spread to more people and they will want to watch the film.

Conclusion

By doing this task we have learnt more about what sort of audiences are drawn to different types of action films so we have an idea of what our film maybe drawn to. We have an idea of certain content we could include to draw in a particular audience such as having male actors will most likely draw in more of a male audience, however as we are a mainstream company we want to focus on drawing in as big as an audience as possible so that lots of people will be interested in it.