How has working title adapted to changes in the film industry?

Working title began as an independent British film Production Company, founded by Tim Bevan and Sarah Radclyffe in 1983. During the time of their independence, working title produced two films; these were ‘My beautiful Laundrette’ which was a romance which made a small gross profit of £2,451,545, and ‘Barton Fink’ which was a mystery thriller which made a profit in the USA of $6,153,939.

However, in 1992, Working Title were bought by the Dutch firm PolyGram and since produced the hugely successful Romantic Comedy Four Weddings And A Funeral in 1994 which achieved the highest grossing British film in cinema history for its time with worldwide box office profits of an estimated $245.7 million. Given the huge success of this film, Universal purchased Polygram and therefore Working Title in 1999 as they wanted Working Title to continue to produce small budget British films which would appeal to both the British and American market.

Working Title during when they were first taken over by universal were focused on producing fairly low budget block buster British films that would appeal to American and British cinema audiences. To do this they focused on popular genres such as Romantic comedies, family films and comedies, selling the traditional British culture abroad to aim it to a multi cultural audience. Notting Hill was another hugely successful Working Title film $363,889,678 which used traditionally British representative actor Hugh Grant, as well as the well known American Actor Julia Roberts to star as the lead roles in a romantic trans Atlantic entanglement which again appealed to it’s key demographic of American and British audiences.

Another enormously successful film was the feel good romantic comedy ‘Love Actually’ which was packaged again to appeal to the American and British market by using Iconic British locations and using Well known British actors such as Collin Firth, Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Liam Neeson, and Keira knightly as well as again including trans Atlantic American romance to target it towards an American audience. Its genre and easy viewing nature as well as wide range of A list actors meant that It’s target audience was going to be wide and varied.

However, changes within technology resulted in changes in the film industry and therefore Working Titles approach to film production. With the increase in Downloading and streaming, as well as the reduced time between theatrical release and DVD many people now wait for the DVD release rather than watching it in the cinema admissions drastically fell, and with more competition from other high budget block buster focused production company’s, working title decided to try to reduce their budget for films even further to mean that there was  less pressure on box office admissions, and to target their films straight to DVD releases.

However these films still made huge profits with Working Title producing successful international targeted films such as the family targeted audience ‘Mr beans Holiday’ which used the already well known and established popular British character Mr bean, played by the Iconic British Actor Rowan Atkinson, which with the lack of dialogue and simple humour appealed to the international audience, especially when including other international characters, meant that it had a huge worldwide audience and managed to make a profit of $229,736,344 with a budget of only $25 million.

Although Working Title mainly stick to the niche low risk, low budget market, they have since released films such as ‘Paul’ which was seemingly aimed for a box office release rather than a DVD release with a significantly higher budget and using more modern technology available in the film industry such as CGI to compete with other competitors. The budget for Paul was $40,000,000 which mainly was due to the extensive use of CGI used throughout the film, as well as for the fairly well known British actors Nick Frost and Simon Pegg. Working Title did however still try to appeal to an American market by setting it in America so it would be culturally relevant to an American audience. The film only made a Gross worldwide profit of $37,984,015 which was arguably down to the limited market the film was targeted towards, as it would’ve been a teen hit, but because of the age 15 certificate it meant that it had lost a large proportion of its audience. It also was a sci-fi comedy which meant that it was mainly aimed at boys which further limited its target audience and meant that it was not set out to produce good box office takings like the film was supposed to be produced for.

With the lack of success from such higher budget and therefore higher risk films, Working Title decided to avoid trying to compete with blockbuster cinema films and focus on producing a continuous stream of low budget successful genre orientated films instead of using the new available technologies such as creating 3-D films or heavily using CGI which would increase the production costs.

One of Working Titles most recent films Anna Karenina which was produced within a budget of £31 million and was based on a well known best selling novel, included well known British actors such as Keira Knightly, and Jude law which appeal very much to the international adult market, and Aaron Johnson who appeals very much to young teenagers, which along with the choice of the international locations, meant that the film, although unique in genre, had a fairly wide and certain audience. As it was a historical period theatrically executed romance, it appealed to the older market which have shown to be one of the largest growing cinema audiences which meant that the film was constructed carefully to ensure a wide and broad audience was there waiting to receive the film.

Working Title have changed the type of films they produce to changes which have occurred within the film industry, such as the decreasing sales of box office admissions, and high numbers of competitors with cinema aimed 3-D hit films. As well as this, Working Title have seemed to grasp the importance of aiming films at an international audience in improving profits, and that low budget television and DVD focused films are the way forward for their company within the film industry.