A franchise is an intellectual property that through out the involvement of some characters, settings and different trademarks taken from an original work, is used or adapted into visual, audio and tangible content such as films, tv series, shows, etc. When it comes to planning and creating a franchise there is usually a rule of thumb that dictates that the bigger the franchise, the bigger the names of the stars that will have to be part of the cast of such project. However, there is also another rule that points out the importance of bringing equally talented individuals to take over the planning, logistics and other important creative decisions and input for the project. The director, cinematographer, producer and people of this nature are brought on board of these projects in order to intensify and increase the dimensions of success that the project could potentially reach.
There is usually a continuos battle in the industry where studios have tried to focus a lot in securing deals and auctioning the rights to adapt several books and novels into screenplays that could potentially become blockbusters and gold mines for the companies. Franchise is a great word in the film industry nowadays, specially when it comes down to talking about gross sales and box office numbers. Just this year Furious 7, one of the most anticipated films of the year broke an unprecedented record at the box office making $1 billion in the first 17 days after the film was released back in April 3. Also, Jurassic World, another film from the worldwide known franchise Jurassic Park owned by Universal studios had the most amazing performance at the box office in Universal's history raising over $1.6 billion worldwide. Taking into account the fact that both films had a production budget of $190 million and $150 respectively, it is safe to say that the return on investment for Universal this year was historic. James Bond, Harry Potter, Pirates Of the Caribbean, Star Wars Transformers, Batman and the Marvel Cinematic Universe are just a few other examples of this elite group of billion dollar franchises in the film industry.
We are currently facing a period of time where studios have been exploring and sometimes overusing this "fantastic" formula, where there is no need to create original content anymore, and all it takes to drive audiences to the theaters is to either reboot the content from previous films or purchase distribution rights from other key franchises once they finish their respective deals with other studios. However this method of generating massive revenue for studios is not beneficial for everybody since a lot of studios slowly push away the chances and opportunities for other filmmakers with original scripts to produce their stories. At the end of the day this is a business and it takes place in a competitive industry suffering the consequences of not taking any risks on other type of projects and therefore, becoming more dependent on a formula that even though it works perfectly fine at the moment, it might not last forever.
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