Source of case study: May 2009 issue "EMPIRE" magazine:
"A new breed of superhero? Will the credit crunch scare studios away the big budget comic adaptions? Has Hollywood run out of true caped- crusading icons? Or is it just time to hit new heights? With this month's X-Men Origins: Wolverine potentially ushering in asea change, Empire looks at the future of the superhero movie"
The previous X-men films were quite widely marketed, and before the X-men was a comic book story, which meant that the films were alreday going to be big because of the fan base alreday asscoisated to the comic books and collectable figurines avalible. This proved to Hollywood that the high number of fans equalled a high number of tickects sold in cinema venues all over the world. As well as the number of cult fans of the comic books, the film company who helped produce the film managed to get hold of stars that alreday had a fan base themselves
X-men origins: Wolverine is a new spin-off film starring Hugh Jackman, and this particular X-men film just happens to be directed by the award winning director of Slumdog Millionare: Danny Boyle. Boyle's fans are also likely to be attracted to the new X-men film now as well creating a massive fan base which equals yet again more money for Hollywood films companies.
The marketing for the film has beem immense, as cinema venues are now putting up posters, there is an offical site for the movie (http://www.x-menorigins.com/) that begins with a trailer of the film before entering the site, forcing fans or other spectators of the site to watch, as well as MSN putting pop-ups in their home page and live messenger. EMPIRE magazine has the poster in the first page as well as a 5 page article about the film.
The star images of the film e.g. Hugh Jackman, Kelsey Grammar, Halle Berry. All of these stars have a number of cult fans. As well as the amount of fans of the comic books, the film company who helped produce the film managed to get hold of stars that alreday had a fan base themselves, in which means that the film relies on both star images for the fans who are not interested in the comic books as well as the fans from the comic books.
Empire magazine "The Dark Knight costnot far south of £200 million- they're not unlimited. The pressure to keep costs down is even more intense due to the current economic cilmate 'We feel budget worry on every movie of course' says Wolverine Producer Lauren Shuler Donner ' and the more money you spend, the more nervous you get so it is a gamble.' Yet it does seem that the most expensive films bring in the largest and most reliable retuerns: while Dark Knight's gargantuan box-office haul is undeinable, the success of Iron Man - not a well known character a couple of years ago - stands as an even more seductive demonstration of the prizes to be won"
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