Looking at the Box Office Mojo website, 19 out of the 20 top lifetime grossing films are part of franchises with the only exception being the famous ‘Titanic‘ (1997, James Cameron) recently beaten by the worldwide phenomenon ‘Avengers: Endgame‘ (2019, Russo’s Brothers). To look at more recent results, 17 out of the first 20 highest grossing films in 2019 are part of franchises, the three others being Asian films.
In order to understand why this seems to happen I have conducted a survey about audience taste for franchises: https://survey.zohopublic.eu/zs/oVB885.
When asking the moviegoers about their favorite film, only 18% of them answered with franchises. However, when they were asked about what film seen during their childhood retained their nostalgia, 59% were part of a franchises.
We then proposed two upcoming films: ‘Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker’ (2019, J.J Abrams) and the upcoming ‘Matrix‘, and this time they were asked why would they be or not be looking forward to see them. For both the majority said they were exited about seeing these films either because “God damnit, it’s a mother fucking stars wars movie! Even if it’s Disney…” or”I like Keanu but the matrix is a classic, flaws and all“.
These results tend to show that while understanding that the production quality of one-offs make them better films, the audience will be marked more by franchises that grew up with them and became ‘classics’ in their mind.
However, we also suggested two sequels that recently came out in theaters, ‘Men in Black: International’ (2019, F. Gary Gray) and ‘The Dark Phoenix‘ (2019, Simon Kinberg), and asked if they would be interested in seeing another sequel. The results came as a surprise with a majority saying they didn’t even see the films but that they would gladly watch another one. Both these films were largely badly criticized with Rottentomatoes scores of 23% for both Men in Blackand Dark Phoenix. To understand these facts we asked another question: “Would you say you generally give the benefit of the doubt to franchises?”. 80% of the readers answered they indeed would.
This survey seems generally to indicate that when a new film that is part of a franchise comes out, the fans pushed by nostalgia will be exited to see it. If it ends up having bad reviews, they just won’t go see that one and wait for the next. Franchises work on this fan trust that a franchise will always come up with a better sequel, and that is how franchises live forever.
Léon Bodier 