Media Franchise as a Trend Setter in the Audiovisual Industry Development: A Case Study Of Highest-Grossing Films

Section: Media Economics

Convergence in the media sphere has made multiplatform production and media content distribution possible. As a result, media franchises have become widely spread. A media franchise is a project that includes a set of media content, often in the form of a series of works that develop in one or several media segments at once. A media franchise suggests licensing intellectual property to other parties to produce new content. The study is aimed at identifying the share of media franchises among the highest-grossing films, examining the structure of the world's largest media franchises and the main directions of monetization of the largest media franchises, which include film production. The author of the paper analyzed the list of all time highest grossing films, which comprises 99 American films and a Chinese one. Only five films from this list – all American ones – do not have a continuation, which means that almost all film products with the highest rates of the world box office are, in fact, media franchises. The monetization of a media franchise is largely dependent on content branding and brand promotion in the form of new media projects and licensed merchandising. The world's largest 100 media franchises, with revenues exceeding $4 billion, are all developing in the audiovisual segment as well as in several other media segments simultaneously.

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