Hollywood’s New Four-Quadrant Movie Model

You need to know: The old Four-Quadrant Model has changed.

This per Wikipedia:

In the movie industry, a four-quadrant movie is one which appeals to all four major demographic “quadrants” of the moviegoing audience: both male and female, and both over- and under-25s. Films are generally aimed at at least two such quadrants, and most tent-pole films are four-quadrant movies.

Male. Female. Adult. Children. Been around for quite a while. However it seems to me that’s the old four-quadrant approach, one that’s being replaced at the major Hollywood studio level by a new model comprised of these elements:

Spectacle. International. Franchise. Nostalgia.

Let’s consider the emergence of each.

Spectacle: Hollywood has always had a fascination with big, bold, brash movies. Consider the 1923 silent movie The Ten Commandments directed by Cecil B. DeMille, story by Jeanie Macpherson:

Walls of fire! The parting of the Red Sea! DeMille was the king of spectacle movies and for decades the major studios of Hollywood have relied on this type of entertainment to make a big splash in movie theaters.

Two things. First, it used to be the studios would only make a few spectacle movies per year. Why? Because they are expensive to produced. The rest of their slate typically would be comprised of a range of other movie genres and budgets to feed into their distribution system. That’s all changed. Consider Walt Disney Pictures. As reported in a recent Forbes article:

They have three animated films (Zootopia, Finding Dory, and Moana), two Marvel movies (Captain America: Civil War and Doctor Strange), three “animated classic made into live-action fantasy” offerings (The Jungle Book, Alice Through the Looking Glass, and Pete’s Dragon), a Steven Spielberg-directed Raul Dahl fantasy (The B.F.G.) and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Most of the 13 movies in Disney’s 2016 release slate rely heavily on mammoth stunning visuals which raises the second point: With the development of digital technologies and computer generated imagery, the spectacle of today is more spectacular than ever. Consider the trailer for the upcoming Paramount / MGM remake of the classic movie Ben-Hur:

Compared to the trailer of the 1925 original, it’s easy to see just how far the capability to create amazing visuals in production and post-production has led to a flood of big budget Hollywood movies awash in spectacle.

Of course, the major studios wouldn’t be making spectacle movies unless they had an audience. And boy, do they in large part due to the second corner of the New Four-Quadrant Movie Model.

International: When I first broke into the business in the 80s, people used to refer to box office revenues outside North America as the “foreign market”. A rather dismissive term, but perhaps explicable seeing as domestic revenues comprised 70% compared to 30% from overseas theaters and ancillary streams.

Now it’s completely the opposite: What we now call the international market is responsible for 70% of box office revenues, a number which figures to continue going higher with China’s rapid expansion as a movie-going nation along with growth in other countries.

What this means is no major Hollywood movie gets greenlit without due consideration of how it’s going to play in countries outside of the U.S. and Canada. That means story, setting, a reliance of visual storytelling, even casting.

Let’s consider one movie as an example:

The cast features 3 characters from the U.S., 1 from the U.K., 1 from Japan, and 1 from the Middle East, and a plot that takes the story all around the world, each of which widens the movie’s appeal for international audiences.

Speaking of China, everything points to it becoming a touchstone for major Hollywood movies as it was in The Martian which featured a significant subplot in which the Chinese National Space Administration emerge as part of the heroic rescue effort. To date the movie has grossed $628M in total box office revenues, $400M of which has come from the international market and fully $95M — nearly a quarter of the money generated outside North America — from China.

The conventional wisdom nowadays is that big spectacle movies translate well in international markets in part because they are less reliant on dialogue and more on visual storytelling, the more eye-popping and mouth-gaping, the better. Moreover these type of movies are what Hollywood — and Hollywood alone — has the resources and expertise to develop, produce, market, and distribute. “Big Hollywood movie” seems to translate into any language around the world.

Franchise: One thing about big spectacle movies aimed at huge markets, both domestic and international, is they cost a lot to make. What used to be an unthinkable amount of money for a movie, say, $100M production budget, is now at the low end of major Hollywood studio releases. We are talking movies with budgets of $200–250M even before marketing costs.

With those type of costs come significant risks and there have already been some big budget box office misfires released in the first quarter of 2016, Gods of Egypt a notable example. This risk has led to Hollywood’s third corner of the New Four-Quadrant Movie Model: Franchise.

Hearkening back once again to the 80s when I first entered the movie business, the financial model was a studio would only consider greenlighting a sequel if it could be projected to make back 50% or more of the original. In other words, it was assumed sequels would generate less revenue than the original.

Cut to 2001 with the movie The Fast and the Furious. Total worldwide B.O.: $207M.

In 2003, the sequel 2 Fast 2 Furious: Total B.O.: $236M.

In 2006, the next sequel The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift didn’t do nearly as well: $158M. But look at what’s happened since:

Fast and Furious (2009): $363M.

Fast Five (2011): $626M.

Fast and Furious 6 (2013): $789M.

Furious 7 (2015): $1.5B.

By the way, the international chunk of the Furious 7 haul in theatrical revenues was $1.16B, three times the amount of domestic box office.

Is it any wonder Universal has sequels 8, 9, and 10 already on their release slate? Every 2 years, they can point to a FF sequel and feel pretty damned confident they are going to make a killing. Hence the value for a studio to have several franchises on their development slate.

So the other day when it was announced that Netflix had ponied up $90M for Bright, a package that included David Ayer (director), Will Smith and Joel Edgerton (actors), and a Max Landis spec script for which they paid $3M, there was this note in Deadline:

Though it will be R-rated, Bright is much closer to Men in Black‘s commercial qualities and VFX than anything Netflix has done before, and it is meant to launch a franchise [emphasis added].

All of those remakes, reboots, sequels, and prequels we see every summer and Christmas holiday season? That represents Hollywood addiction to franchises — and that is going away no time soon.

Nostalgia: The top two movies in domestic box office in 2015 were Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens and Jurassic World. Both movies are awash in nostalgia.

In SW:TFA, we thrilled to see our old friends — R2D2, C-3PO, Chewbacca, Han Solo, Princess Leia, and [spoiler alert] You Know Who at the very end.

In JW, there was a kind of meta-nostalgia at work since the characters were revisiting the old haunts, the audience got to experience what they experienced, but also revisit what we had felt when we saw the original Jurassic Park. This is driven home no more clearly than by comparing these two scenes:

In Jurassic Park, the famous ‘Spielberg stare’ features the characters gawking in amazement at their initial glimpse of the dinosaurs. In Jurassic World, we see the same stare only it’s people astonished at seeing the park for the first time. In a way the characters are like us as we revisit our first trip to the movie Jurassic Park. And that tips off one nostalgic bit of business after another… after another… after another in JW.

Thus we have articles like this:

‘Creed,’ ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ and the Rise of the Nostalgia Sequel.

‘Star Wars’ Premieres in Hollywood to Wild Cheers of Nostalgia, Delight.

Reboots Have Come To Television: Welcome To Nostalgic Revivalist TV.

I should note that if the nostalgia craze is driven by audiences wishing to relive moments from their past, it also can work with the old four-quadrant model: Adults who get to see movies like Star Wars and Creed, recalling films from their youth, along with children and teenagers.

One final point: Since nostalgia movies are based on preexisting material, this also plays into Hollywood’s obsession with pre-branded content, another piece of conventional wisdom about maximizing profit and avoiding risks.

So there you have it, the New Four Quadrant Movie Model: Spectacle. International. Franchise. Nostalgia. Frankly, I think it’s transcended the old model, at least insofar as the major Hollywood studios are concerned.

But all things must change and with the success of Deadpool, perhaps Hollywood is on the verge of a new New Four Quadrant Movie Model featuring this element: R-Rated Superhero Movies.

Takeaway: As writers, if you want to work in the mainstream commercial tentpole space, you have to be cognizant of these four narrative elements because that’s what they are: Dynamics you will want to exploit in your story. If, you prefer dramas, comedies, horror, thrillers, and indie films, fortunately there are production companies and financiers eager to procure and make these type of movies to fill in multiple niches the major Hollywood studios overlook in their rush to big profits via big budget movies.

That said, no matter what type of stories we choose to write, we can use these four quadrants as reminders:

Spectacle: Movies are primarily a visual medium.

International: Expand your consciousness as to who your audience can be.

Franchise: If your story opens itself up to sequels, great.

Nostalgia: Don’t forget that audiences want to feel something when they watch a movie.