timed essay question 2

 

Explain how economic contexts influence film production. Refer to Disney’s The Jungle Book (2016) to support your points.

Disney as a company holds a lot of powers in the film industry and is known by the majority of people as it has released classic films since the 1920's, so its known by multiple generations. As they've grown as a company they have managed to buy other well-known film companies such as Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm and tv channels too, in order to have ownership over large franchises including, Star Wars and Marvel. 

Disney usually sticks to the same cycle when creating their films, a film idea will start as an investment product, then they will market and advertise that product, then will sell the product and achieve a good profit, and finally will either buy more products like film studios or the cycle will repeat for another new film. Overall, Disney tends to play it safe when releasing new films as they want to achieve a large amount of profit from their films. This cycle of playing it safe usually would be to create sequels to films they made previously that were a big hit, they have done this with films like Cars and Toy Story. In recent years however, Disney have used a new way to play it safe when releasing new films, and this is by releasing reimaged, live action versions of their classic films, so far they have done this with Dumbo, Beauty and the Beast and The Jungle Book. For Disney's 2016 live-action re-make of The Jungle Book, Disney set a budget of $175 million as they knew that it would gain a large audience. the film had managed to gross $966 million worldwide, which left Disney with a large profit of roughly $800 million, which give them the opportunity to possibly take more risks with their next film as they have a larger budget to work with. 

This large amount of profit was made from just the ticket sales to see the film in theaters, worldwide, but Disney expected this large audience for the film as they had managed to appeal it to multiple different audiences. the large target audience for this film links to the idea of identity and what this film will mean to some people, for example one audience type that Disney marketed this film to was the original audience for the cartoon jungle book released in 1967. this audience may have gone to see this live action re-make as they would want to see how Disney has adapted the story to make it live action version and how much they have changed it from the film that the audience may remember from their childhood. The other part of the audience will be interested as they may be young or are big fans of other Disney films too, and wanted to see what Disney had changed from the original story of The Jungle Book. This links to the uses and gratifications theory, as audiences will always be interested in films, especially well-known ones made by Disney as they use them for entertainment and escapism from their life. 

The idea of a live action re-make such as The Jungle Book, relates to the idea of post-modernism, and how nothing in the media is original anymore. This idea is shown live action re-makes and sequels to films as they all stick around the same plotline, but are seen as different films. Disney uses this to play it safe when releasing their new films, as they aim to receive a large amount of profit from their films so by using these techniques when making a new film helps to achieve a large amount of profit when the film is released. 

In conclusion economic context influence Disney's film production as they plan their films in the same sort of way every time so in the end they know that they will achieve a large profit when its released and then they will be able to use that large profit to make a new film and this cycle of film making constantly continues.