What kind of institution would produce your film?
The company which I have decided would be ideal as producers of our film would be “Dark Castle Entertainment” (D.C.E). It is a production company which was founded in 1999 by Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis and Gilbert Adler. Dark Castle Entertainment is a subsidiary (subsidiary: less important than but related or supplementary to) of Silver Pictures which is a bigger production company which was also founded by Joel Silver in 1985. Originally Dark Castle Entertainment was created to recreate William Castle’s old horror films who was a horror film director during the 1950’s and 1960’s. After a while Dark Castle Entertainment started to start creating their own films in different genres other than horror such as thriller’s and action films.
Joel Silver Robert Zemeckis Gilbert Adler
Co-Creator of D.C.E Co-Creator of D.C.E Co-Creator of D.C.E
The way that I ended up picking Dark Castle Entertainment, was by first researching films with similar plots to ours, in doing this research I came out with four films which had similarities to ours, these four films were The Jacket (2005), Stonehearst Asylum (2014), Gothika (2003) and finally Shutter Island (2010). I decided that I was going to look into which company’s produced the films and also which company’s helped distribute them; Once i would have all this research I would then look individually into the separate production company’s and see which best fit the criteria to produce our thriller.
Films:
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| The Jacket (2005) |
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| Stonehearst Asylum (2014) |
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| Shutter Island (2010) |
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| Gothika (2003) |
Production companys:
To the left you can see the logo for Mandalay Pictures which was one of the production company's in charge of the movie The Jacket (2009). To the right you can see the logo for 2929 Productions which was the other Production company in charge of The Jacket (2009).
To the left you can see the logo for Icon Films which was one of the production company's in charge of the movie Stonehearst Asylum (2014). To the right you can see the logo for Sobini Films which was the other production company in charge of Stonehearst Asylum (2014).
To the left you can see the logo for Dark Castle Entertainment which is the production company in charge of the movie Gothika (2003). To the right you can see the logo for Appian Way Productions which was the production company in charge of Shutter Island (2010).
I had now looked into each individual production company (Mandalay pictures, 2929 Entertainment, Icon Productions, Sobini films, Dark Castle Entertainment and Appian Way Productions) and had chosen Dark Castle Entertainment, I chose it because after my research I found that it would be a good choice for both me and Dark Castle Entertainment. I believe that Dark Castle Entertainment would want to make our film for several reasons, first of all they have already had experience creating a film quite similar to ours, with the 2003 movie Gothika. Dark Castle Entertainment has also had quite some experience with thrillers, for example with the following films which are categorised as thrillers, sub genres of thriller or hybrid genres which include thriller: Orphan (2009), Whiteout (2009), Splice (2010), Unknown (2011), The Apparition (2012), The Factory (2013), Getaway (2013) all produced by Dark Castle Entertainment. Looking at the list of movies which they have produced I could tell that they liked intricate and interesting storylines but which always had a dark twist to them, for example the movie Orphan (2009) and most noticeably in my opinion Gothika (2003).
Orphan (2009) Whiteout (2009) Getaway (2013)
As i have already briefly touched on, Dark Castle Entertainment has already created a film quite similar in vein to ours, the film is Gothika (2003), Gothika is a movie about a female psychiatrist which one day wakes up as a patient in the asylum she works in, rather than a psychiatrist; when she tries to explain she is not crazy no one believes her. This movie is quite similar to ours in the aspect that it takes place in a psychiatric hospital and that the main character starts off not being a patient in an asylum but ends up finding them selves a patient and nobody believes them when they say there not meant to be a patient and are just believed crazy. I believe that the fact that Dark Castle Entertainment has already created a film which is quite similar to ours wheeled be a great advantage to them and a good reason for deciding to produce our film because they will already have experience filming in that type of scenario, and they will also have contacts to help them when it comes to location, costume, props, actors etc. from Gothika. As well as this, they will also have the benefit of hindsight, when it comes to understanding what works and what doesn’t, what the audience does and doesn't like etc. when it comes to films like these. To back this up bellow you will find a 42 second extract from the trailer of Gothic, where you will be easily able to spot the similarities in plot between our two movies.
I believe that our film would fit in well with the ethos of the company because Dark Castle Entertainment is prepared to give their film large budgets, which leads to better actors and directors and publicity, which all together hopefully leads to a larger profit from the film; For example the film The Reaping (2007) was given a budget of $40,000,000 and ended up making in total $82,555,423 which is quite a large profit. Gothika (2003) which is the film which Dark Castle Entertainment created which i believe to be quite similar to ours is also a very good example of what their large budgets and experience can lead to, Gothika was given a budget of $40,000,000 and made a total of $141,591,324 (without including DVD sales because they are N/A); This is partly thanks to the large budget which they gave because thanks to it they managed to hire famous actors such as Halle Barry and Robert Downey Jr. which increase the popularity of the film and there for the profit it generates. Because Dark Castle Entertainment has already seen that a film such as Gothic can lead to mass profit this will also incline the company to produce our film because in their eyes it is hopefully a good chance at making a lot of money, because if it worked very well before there is a high chance that it will work again if done correctly.
The way that we would make money of our films would be thanks to distribution in Cinema’s and on DVD’s and BluRay. Dark Castle Entertainment does not usually take care of the whole distribution process of creating a film, they usually leave it up to a bigger company which has more experience and better contacts in that area, in the case of Dark Castle Entertainment every single one of their films is distributed either by Warner Bros. or by one of its smaller units such as Warner Premiere or Warner Home Video. It is a big advantage to Dark Castle Entertainment and to us that they have these ties with Warner Bros. because it allows guarantee that their films will do relatively well in profits after release because all their films are distributed by a major company. This is clear to see when looking at the company’s grosses chart where you can observe how much money they generated in box office in the US and internationally and how much money they made off of DVD sales in the US.
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| Dark Castle Entertainment grosses chart |
Originally Dark Castle Entertainment’s main speciality when it came to creating films was the horror genre, especially recreations of William Castle’s horror films, but with time the company began to grow and try and create films in different genres such as action films like Bullet to the Head (2012), action comedy films such as The Losers (2010), supernatural horror thriller’s such as The Apparition (2012) etc. They still do remain true to horror films which they still do create a lot of, but it is clear to see with their long list of thriller films and the success that these thriller films have had that Dark Castle Entertainment know how to produce a thriller film, which is what we want for our film because it is a thriller, and it is also what Dark Castle Entertainment might want because it helps diversify the list of movies and genres they have worked on and would help them not only be known as a production company which focuses on horror anymore, but seen more as versatile production company.
Bullet To The Head (2012) The Losers (2010) The Apparition (2012
Dark Castle Entertainment does have a quite general target audience, but it is a target audience that fits our film perfectly. Since most of the films they produce are either horror or thriller they target an audience which is firstly over 18 because a lot of their movies are quite scary and not suitable for people under the age of 18 such as House of Wax (2005) and The Hills Run Red (2009). Apart from that their target audience can be of any age ranging from young adults of about 18 years old to an adult of about 50 years old as long as they enjoy the genres of film which Dark Castle Entertainment usually produce. Their main target audience is simply the group of people who enjoy watching horror films and being thrilled, stereotypically the genre of horror and thriller are mainly for boys/men because they are seen as more brave and can take the scariness of a film, so to a certain extent when it comes to gender Dark Castle Entertainment do tend to target the male gender more because of this stereotyping, but it would be naive to say that there is not also a female audience for these genre’s of film. In my opinion this target audience is ideal for our film because it allows our film to be consumed by a larger audience, which can lead to more profit for both Dark Castle Entertainment as well as us from money made in box office as well as in DVD sales.
