Timed Essay Question 2

 

Question 2:

Explain how economic contexts influence film production. Refer to Disney’s The Jungle Book (2016) to support your points.

One of the biggest influences on film production is probably economic influence, a good example of this is Disney’s newest version of Jungle Book, the 2016 remake.

As a company, Disney has been around for ages, making their first big film (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) in 1937 and their first animation being in 1928 (Steamboat Willie). Since then they have grown to one of the biggest conglomerates of all time, growing beyond any expectation imaginable. They started off animating fairy tales and telling older stories and kept doing this for a number of years, until they made the first Disney World back in 1955. After this they just kept making more money, investing it back into the company to create new movies and ventures and then using money from those newer companies to fund the new films that they wanted to make. This carried on for multiple years and still carries on now, allowing Disney to be as big as it is now and become a massive household name.

The original Jungle Book movie was released in 1967 (based on the famous Rudyard Kipling book made in 1892) and was a real big testament of what Disney were capable of at the time of making it, showing both their humour as well as their animation skills along with everything else. The 2016 version was then made as a live action film with all of the animals being CGI instead of animated but in a realistic setting. With the 2016 film, they made the themes a lot darker and more realistic than the 1967 version since it was adapted to children now instead of back then, however the remake had a lot of nods to the older film to keep older viewers who had watched the older film happy. The remake followed Disney’s strategy of releasing the idea of the product, to marketing the product, to releasing the product and then using the profits to buy other companies (companies that are already big so that they don’t have to take any risks) and then continue with the cycle over and over again. This creates an advantage for Disney over a lot of the smaller companies since they all of the resources at their disposal compared to the smaller companies meaning in theory, they are able to make better movies with higher production rates. The also release a lot of merchandise for a lot of their brands which increase their profits massively.

Jungle Book (2016) costed Disney just over $175 million to make the film with all of the editing, casting etc. They managed to make $966 million in box office which made the remake the 35^th biggest box office in the world. Most of this money would have gone to either making brand new films, remakes of older things or into expanding the conglomerate so that they own even more companies which means they can make even more profits. This has been Disney’s strategy for growth (which can be referred to as vertical growth since they keep within the same type of media bar the theme parks) which allowed them to buy massive companies like Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, Hulu, 20^th Century Fox and so many more meaning you may be supporting Disney without even realizing it since they are so big now. As well as playing safe with the companies they buy they also enjoy playing safe with the films that they make, making them all family friendly and inclusive as well as remaking older successful films to let them net even more profit.

Overall, it seems like economic status has a lot of influence over the film industry and the production of the film and how all of it allowed Disney to grow as big as it is today.