Institution Research

To achieve an idea of how much film noir takes in at the box office each year I am looking at the figures for drama and thriller genres as the Box Office does not class noir as a genre

– more of a mood.

Box Office Takings

Drama

Thriller

Neo-Noir Takings1980-PresentCrime dramas and thrillers that imitate or bear similarities to the 'Film Noir' movies of the 1940s and 1950s.

Noir StatisticsThis table shows the US takings of the 5 most profitable noir titles.

Brighton Rock – was actually produced in 2010 which shows that it is a neo-noir title. By the statistics it was obviously very popular and profitable. This because it was a modern twist on a classic storyline. When we made our film to ensure a good return we are going to plan carefully giving it the perfect styling of the era through the use of iconography and camera techniques. Also taking inspiration from classic noir films such as the top 5 which can be seen 2 slides ahead.

Noir ProducersFamous noir producers responsible for producing some classic iconic noir films of the era include..• Warner Bros. – They Drive By Night (1940), The Maltese Falcon

(1941), High Sierra (1941), Mildred Pierce (1945), The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947), Possessed (1947), Key Largo (1948).

• Paramount – Among The Living (1941), This Gun For Hire (1942), Double Indemnity (1944), The Blue Dahlia (1946), Calcutta (1947), Sunset Boulevard (1950), Detective Story (1951).

• 20th Century Fox – I Wake Up Screaming (1951), Laura (1944), Fallen Angel (1945), Panic In The Streets (1950).

• RKO – Stranger On The Third Floor (1940), Murder My Sweet (1944), Cornered (1945), Deadline At Dawn (1946), Out Of The Past (1947).

This is information taken from I.M.D.B showing the most popular film-noir feature films. The top 5 are directed by

Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Carol Reed, and Alfred Hitchcock.

Directors

The Numbers• Noir has never really been classed as a genre, it is more

popularly known as a thriller or action. The most popular thriller was released in 1997, Titanic. It sold a dramatically high number of copies that came to a cost of $1,016,477,150. One of the most common films that are known to be a film noir is Se7en. Within one year of it being released it sold copies that came up to a massive expense of $87,046,142.

• Below shows a copy of the average number of tickets sold per year and the percentage of market share from 1995 to 2011 according to statistics from The Numbers website. http://www.the-numbers.com/market/Genres/Suspense.php

As we can see, the year that sold the most tickets was in 1998, this is the time where thrillers became quite popular and films such as Titanic, The Jackal and

The Gingerbread man were released, these films of which are still popular and well known today, Titanic being the most popular and learned about in schools. There was about 180,000,000 tickets sold in that year; it is also the year that had the highest percentage of market share, at about 12%. 2003 shows the year that sold the least number of thriller tickets. This could be

because at this time more modern technology and effects begun to be used, some of which spoilt many movies and made films seem unreal and gives less of an adrenaline rush when watching it, spoiling the movie. It is also the year

that had the lowest market share, of about 4%.

Box Office Mojo• On boxofficemojo.com they class film noir as an individual genre and show that the most popular noir film

is Sin City which was released on 1st April 2005. When being made its production budget was $40million. The film became so popular to viewers that its lifetime gross has came to a staggering cost of $74,103,820, in theatres it sold 3,230 tickets. Of all the 64 most popular noir films, the total lifetime gross comes to $586,250,421. Below shows the top 10 film noir films according to www.boxofficemojo. com

As you can see from the image above of the top 10 most popular film noir movies, there is a range of some of the well known films such as L.A Confidential and Against All Odds. Also, studios such as Warner Brothers (WB) are one of the most common studios and so movies that they promote will then be shown more and become more popular and common to the human eye.

However as you can see here with the 10 least popular film noir films, none of the film titles are very popular, and if you look at the studio that these films are promoted by, not many of them are that popular and well known, for example Roxie don’t promote many movies in the film noir genre so therefore noir films that are promoted by Roxie wont be as popular as the more common films that they help promote.

Which genres are most profitable? Can you notice any trends at the

box office?After looking at the top 4 movie genres it has shown that from most popular to least popular the top 4 movie genres are:• Horrors/Thrillers• Action Adventure• Drama, Romance and Comedies• Documentries

Horrors/Thrillers

Every year this genre has a box office gross of around $161,830,890. The increase in popularity of box office purchases lately since 2007 is because of the hit thriller movies of the Paranormal Activity series’. The first of the 3 was made for $15,000. The Blair Witch Project was the second most famous horror/thriller movie which brought 20,591% return share to the studio. The least popular horror/thriller film was Evil Dead, giving the studio a 3,820% return. Horror/thrillers are also the most popular film genres for bringing in 5* ratings

Action Adventure:These movies make most theatres have sell out tickets. However these ticket sales are matched with huge budgets but not the best for ROI (Return On Investment) and nowhere near beating the high profits and ratings fro horrors/thrillers. For example, Avatar brought in a box office income of $2.7billion, however that’s nowhere near as close to what the Paranormal Activity series’ brought in from just the first movie. So overall although action adventure movies can be huge money-makers, they don’t bring the best income return to box office sales.

Drama, Romance and Comedies:Dramas and romance don’t really include many up to date special effects which lowers the number of copies sold compared to horror/thriller movies that use the 2nd largest variety of special effects, (sci-fi being the first with films such as Back To The Future). this is also partly because they have a huge budget with special effects when It comes to making the movies, so they can bring in a large ROI due to the film staying as close to reality as it can, as that is what these genres are aimed at, staying realistic. The top movie, Once, made a staggering box office income of $19million which is the highest ever made for this genre type, making it a real success to those who were in partnership and helped produce and promote the movie. However just because Once made a staggering success for drama, romance and comedies, doesn’t make it 5 stars all around. There has been a huge variety of box office film failures. The war comedy All The Queens Men stands at the movie with the worst ROI of all movies with a -99.92% return, meaning it only got back .08% of its budget. Imaginary Heroes wasn’t too good either, costing $10million to make and selling just $290,000 worth at the box office.

DocumentariesIts obvious documentaries aren’t going to be the best of film genres for the simple fact that they don’t include any of the best actors, actresses, directors or producers and an almost extinct minute amount of effects. To make a documentary can cost as little as the tiniest fraction of what it would cost to make a Hollywood film. An example of a documentary that is fairly popular is Tarnation, pieced together from the clips the filmmaker had recorded throughout his life and costing just $218. However that budget the filmmaker had doesn’t effect the marketing, distributing and number of copies sold. Still using that amount as an estimate of what the film cost to create, it brought back 266,416.97% of its ROI. Obviously because of the little popularity of actors, budget of making the film and the insight of an unknown persons life, makes it obvious that documentaries such as these will be at the bottom of the most profitable genre list.