Whatever happened to the American blockbuster?

It used to be that a film set in the US with strong American themes was a box-office winner. Now it's the culturally neutral backdrops that are cornering the global market.

"American" was an evocative word for a movie title as recently as 1999, when American Beauty and American Pie were riding high at the global box office. It indicated supremacy, with a hint of kitsch. But something was about to happen to films about America. You could glimpse it in the worldwide top five that year: Tarzan, The Matrix, Toy Story 2, The Sixth Sense and the dreaded Phantom Menace. Three movies unfolding on American soil, one in the African rainforest, the last in a galaxy far, far away.

Of the US-set films, which were Yankee to the bone? Toy Story, yes, but merchandise boy Buzz Lightyear pointed the route away from the rough textures of Americana towards the sterile corporate lobbies and digital anywhere-cities of The Matrix. Which really left M Night Shyamalan's debut as the only unabashed, old-school, all-American film.

We could have used a warning from the future about Shyamalan, but who knew one might be needed about the demise of the American blockbuster? The USA of the collective unconscious – LA storm drains, NYC fire escapes, Midwest horizon roads and speedboat-parted Florida wetlands – is almost extinct at the global box office. Last year's top five had one film, the fourth Twilight, with a US setting; two, if you count the last Transformers, which really belongs to the multimillion-dollar globetrotters that rule the roost now. The new orthodoxy is: if a film is set in America, with strong American themes, the less chance it stands in the new globalised mainstream. What's happened over the last 20 years becomes obvious if you take a scan at the top five for 1990: Ghost, Home Alone, Pretty Woman, Dances with Wolves, Total Recall. All as American (well, and a bit Martian) as George Bush Sr's ringtone.

What's slowly driving out all-American blockbusters are films with culturally neutral backdrops that travel better: exotic animations such as Ice Age and Madagascar, mythological epics like Immortals, and science-fiction. American films are almost becoming ghettoised in the "local film" bracket. The Help, like The Blind Side a couple of years before it, has been swinging for the global consciousness, but in vain: it did 83% of its business in the US. A couple of decades ago, The Grey would have been a high-performing genre pic, the kind of thing that might scrape into the worldwide top 20; no chance. True Grit was the hardest-riding straight western for years, but even the Coens' name couldn't get it any further up than number 30 in the international charts. But the western is the most American of all genres.

Edited from: the guardian

Steve Jobs on the Future of Movie Marketing

The internet has had a major impact on the film industry over the last decade. Initially, there was a concern that the internet would threaten the entire film business as online piracy sites saw annual box office ticket sales decline massively and consistently each year since 2002. Source - www.the-numbers.com/market However, as a whole the film industry today is booming. Overall, gross revenue in the last ten years has doubled with the help of, rather than despite, the internet.

How has the internet helped?

Film studios and film makers have had to adapt to take advantage of the internet and the power of social media. In an interesting twist of fate, what used to be the enemy has transformed itself into the film marketer’s best friend as an inventive way to minimise the overall costs for distribution and marketing.

The Power of Social Media

Films are a social topic which means that social media networks is a fantastic platform for film campaign.

People love to share their opinions on films with their friends so social media platforms are the perfect place to encourage discussion. By creating word-of-mouth marketing on social media a buzz can be created around any film.

Top 5 Highest Paid Actors/Actresses in Hollywood 2014

'The Grandmaster' (2013): dir Wong Kar-Wai (World Cinema)

Mark Kermode reviews The Grandmaster. Inspired by the life and times of the legendary kung fu master, Ip Man. The story spans the tumultuous Republican era that followed the fall of China's last dynasty, a time of chaos, division and war that was also the golden age of Chinese martial arts.

Section A: Case Study Approaches (FM2)

Prepare in depth knowledge of 2 Case Studies to use in Section A of the FM2 exam – 1 major Hollywood Production & 1 Independent or British release. These will give you a head start when it comes to discussing the details of specific releases for the exam. Consider:

What happened during pre-production of your chosen film/s? 

• Whose idea was the film? Did the idea start with the writer, or were writers brought in to develop a preconceived idea?

• Where did the idea come from? Was it an original idea, or perhaps a book first, or TV series, or comic strip, or from some other source?

• Was the film based upon an original script or developed over time by many writers?

• Who financed the film - Production Company?

• Casting – who were cast in the main roles and why? How important were stars? How did the film-makers think the chosen stars would appeal to audiences?

• Who was the producer?

• Who was the director and why did they take the project on?

• Did they have a track record of success?

• Was there anything interesting about the film soundtrack?




What happened during the production phase?

• Was it an easy ‘shoot’? If there were difficulties what were they?

• Where there any difficulties with casting or with acquiring the stars/actors the producer wanted?

• What did the film cost to make? How much did the stars get? Where did the budget go?

• Were there any changes to the script during production? How many changes or re-writes?

• List some of the key people who made contributions to the production.

What happened during the marketing and distribution phase of your case study film?

• Who were the distributors? How well known was the company? What is their track record as distributors? (Other films/genres)

• Who was the target audience? How do you know?

• How did the film-makers decide where to release the film and when?

• What was the marketing and advertising strategy for the film? Was there a premiere, and if so, where?

• Find film posters and analyse them for how they reach their audience(s)

• Analyse a trailer/teaser trailer and consider how the trailer persuaded and positioned British audiences to see the film.

• What outlets were used for advertising? Was TV used, for example?

• Were there any merchandising tie-ins?

• Was any additional publicity gained, and if so, how?



What happened during the exhibition (audience) phase?

• When was the film released; also where and on how many screens?

• Were there any issues with the classification of the film?

• Were there any other special restrictions placed on the exhibition of the film?

• What were the reactions of the critics to the film? Was it considered a critical success?

• Did the film create a particular media debate?

• How much money did the film take? Was it considered a commercial/financial success?

• Did it run in the cinema for some time?


Remember there are questions that you will not be able to answer; however there may be topics that you would like to include that are not covered in the questions set out. All the questions are only offered as guidelines; it is for you to work on the development of your own chosen product from concept to screen.

Adapted from: asanda2filmstudies

The 25 Best Horror Films of the Aughts

The common wisdom, inherited thanks mostly to the 1968-1978 boom of great American horror movies that accompanied some of the nation's most turbulent and hopeless years (at least among those that could be reflected via moving pictures), is that the worse off things are, the more relevant and powerful our cinematic nightmares become. That the halcyon days of horror are directly proportional to the index of actual human suffering. If that's so, the entire world has spent the last decade counting down the few remaining seconds left on the Doomsday Clock. While the few years leading up to Y2K brought with them a set of snarky, masturbatorily meta slasher movies that ensured audiences not only felt superior to the movies they were raised on, but also absolved them of any sense of socio-political obligation, the dozens and dozens of new horror classics that have swarmed out of every corner of the globe since then (not unlike the teeming cockroaches that burst out of E.G. Marshall's chest at the climax of Creepshow) seemed to impress upon us all that the biggest nightmare of all wasn't that the world would end, but that we'd have to continue living on in the colossal mess we've cultivated.

Some of our great new horror movies look to the past for assistance, others resonate with bleak nihilism for our future. Want stone proof the aughts sucked? Recue the blunt climax to the most diverting movie in our entire list of the 25 scariest post-2000 movies, Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell. We're totally f**ked. Eric Henderson.

See the list here at slantmagazine.com

Amazing Spider-Man 2 swings to the top of UK box office

Superhero sequel posts biggest opening at the UK box office of the year so far, £1m ahead of The Lego Movie's bow

The winner

Whichever way you look at it, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has just posted the biggest opening of 2014. Including previews from Wednesday and Thursday last week, the superhero sequel has earned five-day takings of £9.01m, which is ahead of The Lego Movie's previews-inclusive opening tally of £8.05m. Strip out the previews, andThe Amazing Spider-Man 2 comes in at £6.13m, which compares with Lego's £5.9m over the Friday-to-Sunday period.

Back in July 2012, the first Amazing Spider-Man film opened with £11.09m, including three days' worth of previews, totalling £4.36m. That six-day figure is very similar to the sequel's tally over the same period, also including Easter Monday. The first Amazing Spider-Man rapidly faced stiff competition from the likes of The Dark Knight Rises, and ended up with £26m here. With significantly less blockbuster competition in the offing, Sony will be hoping that Amazing Spider-Man 2 will show sturdier legs, pushing up towards £30m. On the other hand, most kids are now back at school, which will limit the film midweek to primarily adult audiences.The official weekend box-office chart does not include takings for Easter Monday. However, distributor Sony reports these as £1.72m, taking Spidey's total to £10.73m for the six days.

Among existing films in the market, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 had the strongest impact on Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which falls a hefty 53% from the previous weekend. But its gross of £16.75m so far is well ahead of the £9.48m achieved here by the first Captain America.

The runner-up

Moving up a place to second position, Rio 2 declined a relatively slim 27% from the previous weekend, and has added a nifty £3.03m over the past seven days. Weekend takings only contributed £1.13m of that total, meaning that the film performed particularly impressively on weekdays last week, in the run-up to Good Friday. School holidays and animation make happy bedfellows for UK cinemas. The original Rio film stood at £8.02m after three weeks of play, compared with £9.79m for Rio 2currently, a disparity that should give distributor Fox encouragement.

The alternatives

Several titles were positioned as counter-programming to Amazing Spidey, with mixed results. The Love Punch certainly offered an alternative to the teen characters foregrounded in the Marvel actioner, via lead actors aged 55 (Emma Thompson) and 60 (Pierce Brosnan). The European romantic caper rung up an OK £613,000 from UK cinemas, although with an aggressive rollout on 371 screens, the number translates to a lacklustre site average of £1,653.

Nurtured at a more selective 118 cinemas, Locke relied almost entirely on the star power of Tom Hardy, the only actor who appears on the screen. A debut of £251,000 and a decent screen average of £2,128 resulted. Distributor Lionsgate will be happy that its gross held steady across the weekend (Fri-Sat-Sun: £80,000, £82,000, £81,000), while the market overall dipped (Fri-Sat-Sun: £4.8m, £4.3m, £4.0m). Including Easter Monday, Locke is up to £316,000. Relevant comparisons are hard to identify, but the last film largely resting on Hardy's shoulders was 2011's Warrior, which kicked off with £808,000 from 383 screens, including £186,000 in previews. Before that, Bronson debuted in 2009 with £258,000 from 85 venues.

The big fallers

The arrival of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 saw hefty falls for a fair few titles, but not many matched the plummets of 67% for Hammer's The Quiet Ones and 69% for action sequel The Raid 2. Genre cinema is traditionally front-loaded, with receptive audiences keen to be the first to see, before attention quickly moves on. The original Raid also fell hard on its second weekend, by 70%.

The art-house battle

Seven weeks after the arrival of The Grand Budapest Hotel, the art-house sector has yet to deliver another clear winner. John Michael McDonagh's Calvary posted a strong second session, with a decline from the previous weekend of just 30%, and £1.39m so far, but this figure is boosted by big numbers in Ireland, which are always included in reports of UK box-office.

Thanks to an expanded screen count (from 28 to 42), Ritesh Batra crowdpleaser The Lunchbox saw its box-office rise by 18% in its second session, and has now grossed £229,000, putting it on course to be one of the bigger art-house foreign language films of the year. Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel is still hanging on at number 12 in the chart, and has now pushed through into eight figures with £10.29m.

New arrival We Are the Best!, from Lukas Moodysson, disappointed relative to its mostly adulatory reviews, with £42,000 from 40 cinemas. That's about level with the debut takings of Lilya 4-Ever (£39,000), but the earlier film managed that tally from only 13 cinemas. Moodysson's best opening remains his crowdpleasing Together (£70,000 from 16 screens), and it was hoped that We Are the Best! would place him back on that commercial trajectory. Including Easter Monday, We Are the Best! stands at £53,000. 

Bums on seats

Admissions figures – the number of tickets sold – have been announced for March, and are 5% down on March 2013. Admissions for the first quarter (January-March) are also 5% down on a year ago. Easter fell late this year, delaying the release of big titles such as Captain America 2, Rio 2 and Noah, so admissions figures should bounce back in April. Whether they can close the gap of 2.05 million – the disparity between 2014 and 2013 after the first quarter – remains to be seen.

The future

Thanks to the arrival of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, UK box office bounced back from the doldrums, rising 61% from the previous weekend, and 85% from the equivalent session a year ago, when Gerard Butler's Olympus Has Fallen knocked Tom Cruises's Oblivion off the top spot. For the immediate future, the picture looks less rosy, since there are no more slam-dunk blockbusters coming for a while. This week sees the arrival of Cameron Diaz comedy The Other Woman, plus Johnny Depp in Transcendence (which played paid previews over the Easter weekend) and Mia Wasikowska in Tracks, the true tale of one woman's solo trek across the Australian outback. None are likely to prove too troubling to Amazing Spider-Man.

Top 10 films April 18-20

1. The Amazing Spider-Man 2, £9,011,114 from 548 sites (New)

3. Rio 2, £1,132,641 from 550 sites. Total: £9,790,565

3. Noah, £920,803 from 476 sites. Total: £7,839,969

4. Captain America: The Winter Soldier, £831,901 from 460 sites. Total: £16,748,625

5. The Love Punch, £613,424 from 371 sites (New)

6. Divergent, £500,206 from 412 sites. Total: £5,445,854

7. Calvary, £394,095 from 165 sites. Total: £1,394,543

8. Muppets Most Wanted, £366,312 from 500 sites. Total: £6,159,978

9. Locke, £251,063 from 118 sites (New)

10. 2 States, £208,578 from 63 sites (New)

Source: The Guardian

Mark Kermode Reviews: 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier' & 'Divergent' (Possible Case Studies)

Danny Boyle: '3D movies are a phase'

3D movies may be nothing more than a "phase", according to Oscar-winning British director Danny Boyle.

Boyle, who on Sunday night received an outstanding contribution prize at the Empire awards, said he was not a fan of stereoscope on film and doubted it would survive.

"I don't use 3D," he said. "I'm a spectacle wearer, so I hate going to 3D movies because you have to wear two pairs of spectacles, which makes you feel like even more of a prat. You know how everybody feels a bit of prat wearing 3D spectacles? You as a spectacle wearer feel a double prat."

Boyle admitted there was "extraordinary work" being carried out in 3D, describing some of the effects in Ang Lee's Oscar-winning Life of Pi as "incredible". But he added: "It's a tool, you know. There are sound innovations coming actually, particularly Dolby Atmos, which are going to do something very equivalent to what 3D does. So, I don't know if 3D will survive to be honest. I think it may be a phase."

Boyle's comments place him in the opposite corner from film-makers such as Avatar's James Cameron, who has embraced 3D with messianic zeal. Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson eventually opted to shoot his new Middle-earth-set fantasy trilogy, The Hobbit, in stereoscope despite earlier misgivings. Lee and Martin Scorsese have brought an auteurish edge to the technology, though the latter has opted to shoot his new film in 2D after bringing the Oscar-winning Hugo to the big screen in three dimensions. Many had expected his new project The Wolf of Wall Street to follow suit: Scorsese suggested in 2011 that he would consider shooting all his future films in 3D and would have liked to shot Taxi Driver and The Aviator in stereoscope had the technology been available.

Boyle's new film, the heist thriller Trance, is released in UK cinemas on Wednesday and in the US on 5 April. Starring James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson and Vincent Cassell, it will screen only in good old-fashioned 2D.

3D films set for popularity slide

First drop in 3D box office projected for this year despite hotly tipped summer blockbusters, according to Fitch Ratings report.

Audiences for films in 3D are projected to decline in 2013, the first drop since 3D exploded with Avatar in 2009, according to a report compiled by Fitch Ratings.

Since the success of James Cameron's sci-fi epic, more and more movies have jumped on the latest iteration of the 3D format, which is no longer confined to animation or big-budget action films. The likes of Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby and Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity will also exploit the new technology.

However, Fitch has concluded the novelty is starting to wear off. 3D box office takings in the US and Canada have remained static at $1.8bn for the past two years, and are set for a slight year-on-year decline in 2013 despite a strong lineup of 3D releases, including Star Trek Into Darkness, Iron Man 3 and Man of Steel.

"Attendance likely benefited from the initial proliferation of 3D films," says the report. "However, the initial excitement has dwindled, and consumers are focused again on the overall quality of the film and are weighing the cost of a premium ticket versus a base 2D ticket."

While overall box office takings increased in 2012 to a record-breaking $34.7bn worldwide, 3D failed to make a similar impact. "Going to the movies remains one of the lower-cost forms of entertainment," says Fitch's study. "However, increased pricing, particularly on 3D films, may erode this perception over time."

Source: guardian.co.uk/film

Why did Disney’s ‘John Carter’ flop?

When Walt Disney Co. executives gave the greenlight to the project that became the Martian adventure film John Carter, they hoped they were launching the studio’s next big franchise.

It was to be directed by Andrew Stanton, who had been associated with a string of successful Pixar Animation Studios films — starting with the 1995 hit Toy Story. The source material was a century-old sci-fi touchstone that had inspired filmmakers including George Lucas and James Cameron. The movie would fit perfectly into Disney Chairman and Chief Executive Robert A. Iger’s big-picture plan to produce movies that would spawn sequels, become theme park attractions and drive sales of John Carter merchandise.

Instead, with a weak opening this past weekend, Wall Street analysts expect the company to take a $165-million loss on a movie that has joined Heaven’s Gate, Ishtar and Howard the Duck in the constellation of Hollywood’s costliest flops.

What happened?

• The acclaimed director had never made a live-action movie before. 
• The executives guiding and helping market his movie were new on the job and had limited experience running movie divisions. 
• The marketing team switched midway through production.
• The source material, written over a century ago by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs, had already been so picked over by its admirers that critics and audiences found the film hackneyed and stale.
• The action plays out on Mars, a planet that contemporary audiences know is barren and uninhabited.
• “You’re not able to sell that,” commented an industry insider on the challenge for the movie's marketers. 
• Posters that at one point had been adorned with a mysterious figure under the letters “JC” were replaced by ads that featured a shirtless man fleeing giant white apes and left prospective moviegoers scratching their heads.
• Audiences have been confused. Marketing strategist Peter Sealey said: “What the hell is John Carter? What’s the film about? I don’t know who John Carter is. You’ve got to make that clear.”

Edited from popmatters.com: 14/3/12

'Sightseers' (2012): British Case Study FM2 - Section A

'Sightseers' is a British black comedy thriller film directed by Ben Wheatley and is written by and stars Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, with additional material from Amy Jump. The film has been selected be screened in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.

Plot
Chris (Steve Oram) wants to show Tina (Alice Lowe) his world and he wants to do it his way – on a journey through this sceptred isle in his beloved caravan. Tina's led a sheltered life and there are things that Chris needs her to see – the Crich Tramway Museum, the Ribblehead Viaduct, the Keswick Pencil Museum and the rolling countryside that separates these wonders in his life. But it doesn't take long for the dream to fade. Litterbugs, noisy teenagers and pre-booked camp sites, not to mention Tina's meddling mother, soon conspire to shatter Chris's dreams and send him, and anyone who rubs him up the wrong way, over a very jagged edge.

Production
The characters came together seven years before the film came out as Lowe and Oram swapped stories based on their common background and childhood holiday experiences. However, the pitch kept getting turned down for being too dark, so they put it online and Lowe sent the link to Edgar Wright, who she had worked with on Hot Fuzz. Wright greenlit the project, so Lowe and Oram did more research and took a caravanning holiday to the locations that would go on to be featured in the film. Ben Wheatley has said that all the locations were very helpful, even after they explained the nature of the film, because they "tried to make sure that it was open and fair to places, and that they weren’t the butt of jokes."

The two were also inspired by Withnail and I.

Reception
The critical reception has been good, with review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes giving it a rating of 88% based on 34 reviews.

Peter Bradshaw reviewed the film twice for The Guardian, first after its preview at Cannes, when he suggested "Wheatley could be suffering from difficult third album syndrome: this is not as mysterious and interesting as Kill List; its effects are more obvious and the encounters between the naturalistically conceived antiheroes and the incidental, sketch-comedy posh characters is a little uneasy. By the end, I got the sense that in terms of character and narrative the film was running out of ideas – just a bit." However, he looked at it again on its theatrical release and admitted that "when I first saw it, I think I might have got out of bed the right side" going on to say "a second viewing has further revealed just how superb are the effortless performances of Steve Oram and Alice Lowe, who are the movie's writers (working with Wheatley's longtime co-writer Amy Jump), and whose creative ownership makes a purely auteurist comparison with Kill List slightly less relevant." He suggests a number of parallels: "an obvious comparison with Mike Leigh's Nuts in May, and there are even traces of Victoria Wood and Alan Bennett, whose gentler, observational comedy is turned into something nightmarish, bringing in an exquisitely horrible Readers' Wives aesthetic", concluding that "[t]he chilling and transgressive flourishes are carried off with deadpan confidence; it's a distinctive and brutally unsettling piece of work"" Kim Newman wrote in Empire magazine that Sightseers is a "uniquely British blend of excruciating comedy of embarrassment and outright grue, not quite as disorientating in its mood shifts as Kill List but just as impressive a film." The Guardian asked an editor of Caravan Magazine for his opinion and he thought the film, which he described as "absolutely brilliant", accurately captured the details of caravanning holidays.

Review
'Sightseers', Hitchcock meets Leigh in grisly, giggly horror

A killer in a cagoule? That is the unlikely but alluring prospect held out by Sightseers, a comedy of manners in which murder arrives out of the great blue yonder, usually in the vicinity of a caravan park.

Director Ben Wheatley has in a very short time established himself as an auteur of the domestic macabre, somewhere between Joe Orton and The Wicker Man. This latest isn't as funny as his brilliant debut Down Terrace or as disturbing as his occult thriller, Kill List, but it features many of his signature touches and sets him apart as a film-maker of exceptional talent and daring.

Involved in the writing of the earlier films, Wheatley here directs from an original script by Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, with additional material by his partner Amy Jump. Lowe and Oram also take the lead roles of Tina and Chris, two thirtyish introverts who have just got together.

independent.co.uk

Background
'Sightseers' began life as a short film made by Lowe and Oram with director Paul King (The Mighty Boosh). Intended as a teaser for a TV comedy series, it was well received but deemed too dark. Fortunately director Edgar Wright saw its potential as a feature film, and put the actors in touch with Big Talk Productions, who made Wright’s own films Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007).

Ben Wheatley was approached to direct after the critical success of his debut feature Down Terrace (2009), a micro-budget crime drama laced with dark humour. He committed to the project while working on his follow-up, the audaciously bleak horror film Kill List (2011).

Since its world premiere at Cannes in May, 'Sightseers' has enjoyed widespread acclaim on the international festival circuit, receiving awards for best actress (Lowe) and screenplay (Lowe, Oram and Amy Jump) at the 45th Sitges Film Festival. The film received its UK premiere at the 56th BFI London Film Festival, and has subsequently been nominated for seven BIFAs, including best director for Wheatley, and best British independent film.

bfi.org

Box office

The film’s critical status meant a wider distribution than most films with this kind of budget (very low/unknown) and genre mix – through the European ‘major’ StudioCanal. However, despite the generally very good reviews, audiences have not been large and it's doubtful that the film has gone much beyond the core horror fanbase and those who follow the more cultish end of the British independent film scene. 

'Sightseers' opened very strongly on 92 screens but then tailed off quite dramatically by its third weekend, suggesting that word of mouth was not so good. Nevertheless it has managed over £1,000,000 so far which is acceptable for a UK cinema release and bodes well for a subsequent life on DVD.

More here

Action sequels hit more targets beyond US shores

Movies that seem cheesy in the States – where audiences hate arthouse films but demand novelty in the mainstream arena – often haven't passed their sell-by date abroad.

It's not been the finest month for old-age powerhouses at the US box office. Arnold Schwarzenegger's comeback film proper, The Last Stand, made a disastrous $12m. His old sparring partner Sylvester Stallone might have looked in better shape after his successful Rambo and Rocky resurrections of recent years, but his revenge thriller Bullet to the Head did even worse: only $9m. Bruce Willis took the safest course, sticking to a tested property for his A Good Day to Die Hard, and came out tidiest: $59m and counting. But that's still John McClane's worst performance on home turf (even before inflation-adjustment).

The results cast serious doubts about the future viability of the 1980s head-boy brigade – especially Schwarzenegger and Stallone, who are respectively eight and nine years older than Willis. It's the first clear sign that age might now be working against them – except in cases where they make a song and dance of it, like in meathead-carehome franchise The Expendables. Not only are the Hollywood trio battling their own bodies, their dimming star wattage, and perhaps the diminishing importance of star power itself, they also have to contend against a little commented-on feature of the American film market: a marked prejudice against anything old.

It's not just action stars saggy of pec who are affected, but drooping concepts, too; sequels, especially. If you examine the returns for repeat instalments, something quickly becomes apparent: franchises tend to run out of steam faster at the US box office, and hold up better internationally. Die Hard, to take an example at hand, follows the pattern, with a couple of unexpected swerves:

1. Die Hard, 1988 ($83m US domestic/$57m overseas)
2. Die Hard 2: Die Harder, 1990 ($117m/$122m)
3. Die Hard: With a Vengeance, 1995 ($100m/$266m)
4. Live Free or Die Hard, 2007 ($134m/$249m)
5. A Good Day to Die Hard, 2013 ($59m/$161m)

The US domestic gross drops away as the titles get more comical; apart from the store of good faith that buoyed up the first sequel in 1990, and a resurgence of interest after a 12-year-gap for the fourth film (which perhaps also explains the slight drop in overseas box office for Live Free – the franchise had to reintroduce itself to a vastly altered international landscape). The fifth film hasn't finished its global run yet, so it should finish nearer the fourth's take.

The US domestic gross quickly levels off, or falls away as sequels pile up; growth is sustained longer abroad. That's the rule here, and it holds true more often than not. It's correct for The Expendables followup, Spider-Man, Batman and Men in Black. Shrek and the Ice Age menagerie have seen the same trend. This tendency almost seems counterintuitive: the received idea is that US audiences, the same ones who run screaming from arthouse and subtitled films, are fundamentally risk-averse and conservative. Actually, in the mainstream commercial arena, they're the most discerning, driven by an appetite for fresh spectacle and novelty, more easily becoming impatient with shopworn formulae.

The sequels rush has been fuelled by overseas markets: by the need to create franchises that insure against the risk of launching a film in culturally diverse territories. One way of interpreting the international audience's greater appetite for sequels is that, at blockbuster level, most countries are passive consumers for what Hollywood puts out – rather than producing their own spectaculars.

Guardian.co.uk

11 Rules for Box-Office Appeal

In 1941, a year after his movie, The Great McGinty, won the first ever Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, celebrated screenwriter/director and "father of the screwball comedy," Preston Sturges, drew up the following "eleven rules for box-office appeal."

(Source: The Cinema of Preston Sturges: A Critical Study; Image: Preston Sturges, via PBS.)

• A pretty girl is better than an ugly one.
• A leg is better than an arm.
• A bedroom is better than a living room.
• An arrival is better than a departure.
• A birth is better than a death.
• A chase is better than a chat.
• A dog is better than a landscape.
• A kitten is better than a dog.
• A baby is better than a kitten.
• A kiss is better than a baby.
• A pratfall is better than anything.

Also see: Movie trends for 2013 @ guardian.co.uk

'Safety Not Guaranteed' (2012): Released Boxing Day

Safety Not Guaranteed is a 2012 American comedy-drama film inspired by a 1997 Backwoods Home Magazineclassified ad – written as a joke filler by Backwoods employee John Silveira – by a person asking for someone to accompany him in time travel. It was screened at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival where it won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award.

Budget = $750,000
Box office = $4,001,58 (US - Released 8/6/12)

Safety Not Guaranteed received critical acclaim with a 94% approval from 109 critics on Rotten Tomatoes—an average score of 7.6 out of 10—where the consensus reads: "Safety Not Guaranteed's ostensibly modest ambitions are outmatched by the movie's strong performances, beguiling charm, and heartfelt story." Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote that the story's shenanigans are "harnessed to a plaintive underlying theme about the fading dreams of those aspiring professionals in their 20s and 30s."