Exam Research

                                       Media Induction work Films
                                               The King's Speech

The King's Speech UK film poster
                                                        

The BFI and the British Council partnered up in order to make one force. Creative Europe a seven- year funding programme of which will boost the industry in Britain, as it launched in the UK on the agreed date of the 1^ST of January 2014.
The money went to many companies in order for them to develop their businesses greatly. For example, they directly supported many UK production companies by giving €50 million. A company that benefitted from this was Ruby Films.
Ruby Films (and television) is a UK independent production company. Ruby films have supported a range of award winning films and television. It is classed as one of the UK’s leading companies, with proof of their production of ‘Jane Eyre’. Jane Eyre was made for the BBC and released in 2011. It made a profit of $34 million.


Momentum

Momentum pictures is a leading independent motion picture distributer located in London, UK. They have won 8 BAFTA awards for their success within production, being the highest amount of awards won than any other UK distributers. 7 of the awards where for The King’s Speech’ and 1 for ‘The girl with the dragon tattoo’.The link with ‘The King’s Speech’ is that the film is Momentum’s most successful release, as it won an Oscar, 8 BAFTA awards and a BIFA award.The King’s Speech was released in the UK on the 7^th of January 2011. The weekend box office rated this film number 1 on the first week of showing. It was shown in 395 cinemas within the UK and made a gross of £3,523,102 which is good compared to the Warner Brothers film of 127 hours which made £2,168,570 also in its first week. 
In the second week, the film was still rated number 1, with a 25% increase. They had another increase of £4,401,926 which overall gave a figure of £10,759,019 and being shown in 422 cinemas.
However, after a month the film did drop to number 2 as Disney released an animation called Tangled. This resulted in them dropped by 14%. However, they still did make £3,634,265 (overall: £24,905,378 ) and shown in 536, which still increased due to popularity. Even though they dropped, they still did well at keeping at a good spot of number 2, as 127 hours had dropped to number 11.
Even after 3 months, the film was ranked number 13, with a taking of £44,407,313 so it doubled the figures in two months.
When The King’s Speech was in its first week, ranked number one, Harry Potter and the deathly hallows ( part 1 ) was ranked 7, but in its 8^th week, therefore, after 2 months of each being shown the kings speech did get ranked better, as that was ranked number 6 in its 8^th week of being in cinemas. However, Harry Potter overall did make more money in total due to the higher popularity of the film being a series of 7 films, of which 1 film split into 2. Therefore, existing audiences were expecting the Harry Potter film and The King’s Speech wasn’t, only being advertised by the trailers and posters.

Submarine

Submarine is a UK based film that wasn’t as successful in the box office. For example, in the first week of being shown, the film was ranked number 12, only making £244,476 and was shown in 60 cinemas. By the second week, the film was still ranked number 12, and decreased by 6% as only taking in £230,935 even though the number of cinemas did increase to 102. Compared to the King’s speech, who was in its 12^th week, Submarine was ranked one above this.
By the third week, the film was no longer listed and no ratings were given by the box office.
This shows that even though The King’s Speech was ranked lower, the number of people going to watch the production was consistent, meaning the number of viewers dropped at a much lower rate, allowing them to do better.
Submarine was produced by the company called Warp Films. They are more commonly known for the production of short films, of which they won a BAFTA in 2003. Film4 Production also helped in backing the film in the box office, Film4 production is known for helping produce many films such as ‘12 years a slave’ and ‘127 hours’ which both did well in the box office.

The film was distributed by Optimum, now known as StudioCanal Uk. StudioCanal UK are known to distribute more innovative productions, so they do not aim for a big audience. The most successful production they distributed was ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’.
To compare the producers and distributers of ‘Submarine’ to that of ‘The King’s Speech’ was that Submarine didn’t have the well-known and companies that were certain to make sure the film was successful in the box office, yet it still did do well at what it was trying to achieve.