Adaptations versus original film premieres trends in broadband society: a comparative analysis

Abstract

In the era of the Broadband Society, cloud journalism, and streaming, the film industry is trying to modify traditional distribution channels. The adaptation of literary classics was one of the most widespread practices to obtain well-known, quality material for new productions. The objective of this research is to understand empirically what differences are involved in industry’s major production and distribution companies’ choice between adapting preexisting material or creating an entirely new film, as well as the benefits of adaptations. The methodology is comparative and quantitative, consisting of collecting data on films from the five major distributors (Universal, Warner Bros, Disney, Sony, and Paramount) from 2010 to 2019 and analyzing variables to detect market trends related to adaptations during that decade. We observed a higher percentage of adaptations as well as correlations between adaptations and film genre, distributor and genre, adaptations and awards, awards and genre, and genre and the film’s evaluation, as well as between distributor and average budget, adaptations and budget, adaptation and opening weekend box office takings, genre and profit, adaptations and worldwide box office revenues, ratings and worldwide box office takings, and awards and worldwide box office takings; however, this was not observed between adaptation and profit and the breakeven point. It is concluded that, despite the fact that the trend of using this practice has not increased in recent years, it provides a great advantage compared with debuting new intellectual property.