Sequel Secrets

Filmmakers talk about magic and art and there is a lot of these in the movie business but it is also just that; a business. In the end films that get funded are those that the financiers are confident will make their money back for them. It’s not a watertight equation though, every year many dud films make their way onto screens and even very good films may not make money. Yet there continues to be research into what will make a film a hit and when it comes to sequels a new study has the answer.

Sequels are big business in Hollywood. It makes sense that if a film was a success then another in the same vein should do well but all too often sequels fail. Consider the Star Wars films; the first three films were enormous successes but the 1999 prequel Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace has been met with derision. Then the most recent sequel Star Wars: The Force Awakens has done extremely well. Why has the latest offering done well where films four, five, and six in the Star Wars pantheon have fared badly?

In the latest study researchers conducted three experiments. The first two experiments involved people responding to new and updated versions (“iterations”) of digital games. The third experiment involved working with the movie industry to see how sales and return on invest fluctuate in various movie franchises.

The first two studies showed that to keep consumers happy you need to balance familiarity, innovation, and nostalgia to make small “iterated offerings” rather than introduce sweeping changes. The film industry analysis showed that this applied very directly to the film industry.

The biggest finding was that once you have a new product such as Star Wars you want to create a series of minor innovations first before you make the big push into innovation. Star Wars – The Force Awakens fits this perfectly as it makes many nostalgic nods to the first three films but then makes small, very small, steps of its own.

The researchers say that in film, and other industries, their single most major finding is “increment before you innovate”. They quote that the iphone is a classic case as it introduced iphone 4, then iphone 4s, then iphone 5 and so on, an incremental change before a slightly bigger change.

It comes back to the fact that consumers do not seek excitement all of the time, they seek a mixture of safety and excitement meaning that you don’t have to make major changes all of the time. The Bond films are a classic example, the plots stayed the same for a few decades with just the actor playing Bond changing and then with the advent of the blond Bond, Daniel Craig, the plots shifted a gear but the consumer was ready for that innovation and so the latter films have succeeded.

Movies are magic, but they are also the art of the pragmatic.