What do "Crazy Rich Asians", "Fallout", the women's movement, and "break out" films have in common?
FINDING JOY
"Fallout" and "Crazy Rich Asians", topped the American box office returns the last two weeks of last summer. Obviously, American audiences are fascinated with China and the Chinese love American films.
"Fallout" Domestic $220,159,104 Foreign $570,858,348 (per BoxOfficeMojo)
"Crazy Rich Asians" Domestic: $172,421,871
Budget $30,000,000 World $233,375,065 (per IMDB)
"Crazy Rich Asians" shot in Singapore and the United States
"Finding Joy" shoots in Singapore and the United States.
The cast is American and Asian
THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT
The potential United States box office returns from the women's demographic can be extrapolated by the millions of women we see demonstrating in the street and the hundreds of thousands of women who worked tirelessly to literally change our government. These women are not going away and what they will be searching for when "Finding Joy" is released is an uplifting film. "Finding Joy" does that. It gives them hope and it gives them joy.
BREAK OUT FILMS
The following is an investigative report from Film Industry Analysts,
Stephan Follows and founder of The Numbers, Bruce Nash.
What Types of $10M – $20M Films Break Out?
“We’ve reviewed all the films in the Nash Information Services’ database in the $10 to $20MM budget range released between 2000 and 2016. We then identified the sixty most profitable movies, after accounting for all sources of revenue and estimating marketing and distribution costs. That gives roughly three films a year from the period under consideration .
By far the biggest category in the list is a group of films that found an older audience – what we’re calling Senior Cinephiles. At the risk of upsetting every 36-year-old reading this article, we’re considering anyone over 35 to be “senior.”
Films in this category have an audience that is roughly 55% over the age of 35, compared to around 22% for the market as a whole. To give you a sense of how much these films differ from the norm, see below for the demographic data for these films as they relate to UK cinema audiences. Unsurprisingly, high-quality drama, often with a grey-haired lead, dominates the upper reaches of this list. Notably, around half of the films in the list are foreign, including The King’s Speech, The Queen, Philomena, The Artist, The Imitation Game, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Downfall, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Les Intouchables.
The other half tend to be US-produced films that vied for (and sometimes won) Oscar glory: Brokeback Mountain, 12 Years a Slave, Sideways, Into the Wild, The Hurt Locker, Black Swan, Spotlight, The Fighter, and Letters from Iwo Jima, for example. So it’s fair to say that going after an older audience with a high-quality drama is a good bet for success at this budget range.
LEGS LIKE A CENTIPIED
The feature script of "Finding Joy" doesn't end. It closes on a cliffhanger,
which begs for a sequel...
...then a cable series and spin-offs.
"Dallas", the longest-running drama series on television was about JR Ewing and his family. It ran for thirteen years.
"Knots Landing" the spin-off, was about JR's son, Gary Ewing, and his family. It ran for fourteen years.
"Pacific Palisades" is the same basic format as "Dallas", using the Richman family instead of the Ewing family. The synopsis is available upon request.