Blockbuster Syndrome and the Jaws
Introduction
The Hollywood at the moment is dominated by large media corporations. The way things work in this scenario is that movie makers most of the times are responsible to their stakeholders. These stakeholders want movies to make profit out of their “investments. The growing obsession of the industry with massive scale productions and profits is called Blockbuster syndrome. During the 80’s and 90’s specially, this phenomena was catching up with the movie makers as they were not able to gauge the effect of changing consumer perspective in the marketplace. The movie that can be attributed to start this whole concept was Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. This article will discuss how that movie defined that phenomenon …show more content…
The term block buster now is used for the movies that are extremely high in budget, and the productions that are making an attempt to make the most of the out of the entertainment. As discussed above, Jaws was one of the first movies that brought about this concept of merchandising (Biskind, 1975). These are some of the components that can make or break the financial success of the film. Thus, the blockbuster syndrome was the time period when movies were evaluated and judged by their marketing effort rather than production quality and value. Due to that, even the movies that are low on critical claim or box office success such as Last Action Hero and Godzilla can be attributed as the blockbuster due to their high budget and subsequent marketing effort (Cook, 2004). However, the focus on creating blockbusters became so intense that it drove some of the more artistic or smaller scale films out of the market (Cook, 2004). This was due to the fact that, producers were not willing to spend money on the movies or ideas that were not creating enough value for them (Biskind, 1975). The fact of the matter was that all the studios now were keeping Jaws in mind. They were looking for a movie on which they can make out a brand. They were now less willing to take risks when it comes to movie making (Stringer,
Introduction
The Hollywood at the moment is dominated by large media corporations. The way things work in this scenario is that movie makers most of the times are responsible to their stakeholders. These stakeholders want movies to make profit out of their “investments. The growing obsession of the industry with massive scale productions and profits is called Blockbuster syndrome. During the 80’s and 90’s specially, this phenomena was catching up with the movie makers as they were not able to gauge the effect of changing consumer perspective in the marketplace. The movie that can be attributed to start this whole concept was Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. This article will discuss how that movie defined that phenomenon …show more content…
The term block buster now is used for the movies that are extremely high in budget, and the productions that are making an attempt to make the most of the out of the entertainment. As discussed above, Jaws was one of the first movies that brought about this concept of merchandising (Biskind, 1975). These are some of the components that can make or break the financial success of the film. Thus, the blockbuster syndrome was the time period when movies were evaluated and judged by their marketing effort rather than production quality and value. Due to that, even the movies that are low on critical claim or box office success such as Last Action Hero and Godzilla can be attributed as the blockbuster due to their high budget and subsequent marketing effort (Cook, 2004). However, the focus on creating blockbusters became so intense that it drove some of the more artistic or smaller scale films out of the market (Cook, 2004). This was due to the fact that, producers were not willing to spend money on the movies or ideas that were not creating enough value for them (Biskind, 1975). The fact of the matter was that all the studios now were keeping Jaws in mind. They were looking for a movie on which they can make out a brand. They were now less willing to take risks when it comes to movie making (Stringer,