Film Institutions Research

I decided to research the top grossing horror films to find out which film institutions have the most successful repertoire. Doing this helped me to realise which is most likely to produce, exhibit and distribute my film. I narrowed my research down to the top 5 institutions, which are:

Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures is an American film studio founded in 1912, and is one of the 'Big Six' film studios in Hollywood. Universal Pictures are not renowned for their horror films, producing more hit films in the adventure, drama and romance genres. Examples of these are Lost In Translation (2003), King Kong (2005) and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007). Universal Pictures haven't had huge amounts of success with their more recent horror movies, however, films such as Jaws (1975), Dracula (1931), The Wolf Man (1941) and The Mummy (1932) were huge box office hits- Jaws being the 9th highest grossing film of all time (according to the chart below, found on Wikipedia).

20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox is another of the 'Big Six' Hollywood film studios. Founded in 1935, it has become the most recognised film institution in the world. Their most successful film is Avatar (2009), which raked in over $2 billion in the box office. They have produced some horror films, however, like Universal Pictures, they tend to stick to their more profitable film genres- comedy, family, and fantasy. Horror films they have made include Alien (1979), The Omen (1979), and Shutter (2008).

Warner Bros
Warner Bros is another widely known film institution, based in New York and California. They produce and distribute films from a wide range of different genres, and appear to have had more success with modern horror films than Universal Pictures and 20th Century Fox. They create, produce, distribute, license and market all of their own content. Successful horror films Warner Bros have created include Orphan (2009) and Sweeny Todd (2007).

Lionsgate
Most of the films that Lionsgate have produced belong to the action, drama, or thriller genres, which are much more relevant to horror than the genres that 20th Century Fox and Universal Pictures focus on. Lionsgate's most successful films according to box office results are in the form of young adult franchises such as The Hunger Games franchise (2012-present) and the Divergent franchise (2014-present). Lionsgate are also responsible for several horror films, including the widely known Saw franchise (2004-2010), My Bloody Valentine (2009) and The Last Exorcism (2010). Compared to Universal Pictures, Lionsgate does not have much experience in creating horror movies- they have only released a few and they are all quite recent releases. However, Lionsgate has also had huge box office success with franchises, so if our film was to be part of a series, this would probably be the company we would choose.

Hammer Films
Hammer Films is a notable British company founded in 1934 who are best known for their work with Gothic Horror movies in the 1950s-1970s. In this time period they released classic horror films such as Dracula (1958), The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), The Mummy (1959) and The Phantom of the Opera (1962). Due to the saturation of the horror film market by competitors, Hammer lost their American funding in the late 1960s and 1970s. This led to the company ceasing to produce films in the mid 1980s.
Hammer Films was bought and revived in 2000, and began producing films again several years later. This new era of Hammer films includes horrors such as Let Me In (2010)- a film I studied here , and The Woman In Black (2012)- a film I have studied here. This shows Hammer's diversity and understanding of the Horror market as they have managed to make a successful comeback after over 20 years.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I believe that the best film institution to represent our film would be Hammer Films. They are a company that is most well known for producing horror films, and has had great success in doing so. As they have experience in working with horror films, the people working on our film would have an extensive knowledge about props, costume, lighting and editing horror films. This would help to make our film the best it could be and ensure it embraces the typical conventions of horror films. Hammer is a fairly small film company, meaning that a collaboration with another company would be likely. This would help our film to be more successful as the companies would be able to share ideas and we could get a wider range of opinions on various aspects of creating the film.