-Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan have achieved the near impossible-Theyve created a wildly successful production comany in a country where the film business is subject to repeated predictions of imminent doom.
-Working Title Films began life co-producing the short film The man who shot christmas (1984).
-This led to their first film for channel Four and the first of many landmark Working Title Films - My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) Directed by Stephen Frears.
-In 2009 still the most successful British film production ever.
"Their films have grossed more than £1.2 billion since 1984, and that is a conservative estimate."
My Beautiful Laundrette (1988)
A groundbreaking script by Hanif Kureiishi co-produced with channel, fitting their remit of offering challenging work that would not find a home elsewhere on television or in the UK cinema.
Frears offers a critique of the Thtcherite work ethic and the entrepreneur society, showing a white underclass declining under the determination of new immigrant businesses.
-Made for $400,00 it took over $2.5 in the US alone.
The success of their first three films, which all dealt with British subjects, alerted the wider film industry to this independent production company, leading first to a international co-productions in 1988 including their first Anglo-America production For Queen and Country (starring a youthful Denzel Washington)
The success of this film on both sides of the Atlantic gave Working Title a template for co-production that they immediately began to exploit, and one that has been the aspiration for most other British independent production companies since.
The working title movie template
-British film + American star = $$$$$
-Appeal to international market (& success for the British Film Industry)
-This approach has provoked much criticism about the 'mid-Atlantic' nature of the films.
Why UK/US Co-productions?
According to Bevan: "Before co-productions e had been independent producers, but it was very hard to mouth. We would develop a script, that would take about 5% of our time; we'd find a director, that'd take about 5% of the time and then we'd spend 90% of the time trying to juggle together deals from different sources to finance those films. The films were suffering because there was no real structure and the company was always virtually bankrupt."
-Working Title want to make European films for a worldwide audience.
-They want to imbue them with European ideas and influences and then cant do these things without the backing of a major Hollywood studio.
-1998 - Polygram bought by Universal a Hollywood studio itself owned by Seagram.
The financial stability offered by the support from a major studio allowed Working Title to move rapidly on to the international stage, and Polygram being taken over by Seagram and subsumed into its film arm, Universal pictures, in 1999, further strengthened this.
A marked change of direction took place at this point, with the traditional provincial independent territory being scorned in favour of international prospects.
-2000 - Seagram is brought by vivendi the French multimedia conglomerate
Vivendi- Universal- Working Tite-Working title is now owned by Universal, which is in turn owned by Vivendi.
Working Title took co-production further when formalizing their relationship with Polygram (later Universal) where US investment of 30% did not prevent them from obtaining EU/UK tax advantages. A 30% stake in the budget + Hollywood support clearly stimulates other investors willingness to get involved in a film. It is this advance in the model that radically enhanced the production processes and values in Working Title films.
The most important part of the business is developing scripts. Working Title has a strong development team and invests heavily in making sure that they get it right. They usually have around 40 - 50 projects in development at any time and their average spend on development is around $250,000 to $500,000 per script.
They aim to make around 5 to 10 films a year, spread across different budget sizes (with an average of $30 to $40 million) and genres.
The Working Title has produced many films that have had similar storylines to ours therefore will easily distribute our film without a second thought. It will also be cheaper for them and us to support us in the making and also they will be able to not only put our film on local British cinemas but also across the US, making more money through creating hype through posters, social media and Universal studios website.
Our film will be viewed on all local cinemas such as Vue, Odeon in England, it can be a mainstream film, as we will be supported by the Working Title which is part of the Universal Pictured subsidiary so we can get them to help us to hype up our film in the US which will eventually go viral and worldwide.
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