Explain how the changes in marketing and circulation has affected the film industry. Use the jungle book and the jungle book remake to support your answer.
In 1967, the jungle book was set to be Disney's next big release. This was not long after the Disney ‘dry spell’ which began in the 40s as movies like Fantasia and Pinocchio massively under performed. Therefore, to combat this, Disney developed a new marketing strategy. In trailers and other promotional materials Disney marketed this movie as a revolution in animation with amazing new features such as their multi lens camera which was able to display a far vaster number of colors. Promoting this attracted more people to the movie as it made it appear more must see and exciting. Disney also opted as always to promote the movie as a family friendly classic to appeal to the wider audience. The |Movie was a massive success for Disney as it became the 29th highest grossing film of all time in the US with a total grossing of $205 worldwide, $6.8 million of which came from Germany becoming the country's highest grossing movie of all time. This was a key attribute to Disney's modern success as it began to elevate form a large company, to a conglomerate and with the use of vertical integration to distribute the Movie, it used its own distribution company Buena Vista distribution to maximise its own profits and to movie into other forms of film production. With the release of the original jungle book, we saw Disney use many marketing techniques in order to promote the film, these techniques were elevated and used even more strongly in the 2016 remake.
Disney at this point had become one of the largest entertainment companies on the planet as one of the big 5 with an estimated worth of $60 billion. The media conglomerate was planning to release their newest movie the jungle book, a remake of the 1967 classic being directed by Jon Favreau. In order to promote this movie, Favreau used several, different marketing ploys. Firstly, with the release of the trailer he made not only gave the movie a much darker ton with many horror elements to attract the older teenage crowd, but they also released the initial trailers during the Superbowl, an action heavy sports event with a majority male audience, they also released the trailer during the first of the new Star Wars trilogy, a franchise with a 58% male audience. In the trailers, Disney employed ‘pull marketing’ where they revealed the A-list actors like Bill Murray and Christpoher Walken who will be playing the roles of beloved characters like Baloo and King Louie. This technique was imported in attaring as many people to the new movie as possible, a technique not used in the 67 version. A technique both the movies shared was the promotion of the groundbreaking technology that the two were using, with all but one of the main characters (the man cub Mogli) being digitally developed animals. This attracted the crowd of tech lovers who would be interested in the movie for its new development in movie technology and CGI. One clearly new technique which helped promote the movie was the use of social media, the use of a snapchat filter which changed your face into the fiendish Kaa, as well as many of the actors in the movie posting behind the scenes pics of the affects, cast and sets helped stir up much excitement for the movie and drove it towards financial success. The movie was a financial success for Disney through its total grossing of $966 million worldwide on a $175 million budget. The success for the film showed the change in marketing techniques and the quick circulation and how much they affect the industry as a whole.
