International films and International Markets: The Globalisation of Hollywood Entertainment, c.1921–1951

Abstract

The international appeal of Hollywood films through the twentieth century has been a subject of interest to economic and film historians alike. This paper employs some of the methods of the economic historian to evaluate key arguments within the film history literature explaining the global success of American films. Through careful analysis of both existing and newly constructed datasets, the paper examines the extent to which Hollywood's foreign earnings were affected by: film production costs; the extent of global distribution networks; and also the international orientation of the films themselves. The paper finds that these factors influenced foreign earnings in quite distinct ways, and that their relative importance changed over time. The evidence presented here suggests a degree of interaction between the production and distribution arms of the major US film companies in their pursuit of foreign markets that would benefit from further archival-based investigation.

Hollywood movies and China: Analysis of Hollywood globalization and relationship management in China’s cinema market

“…Globalization has pushed Hollywood major studios to become global capitalists that have control over the distribution and exhibition network in many global film markets by owning some of the local film distributing and exhibiting corporations through vertical and horizontal integration (Jin, 2012). Indeed, the success of Hollywood movies in global film markets can be attributed to the extensive networks of distribution which are owned and operated by Hollywood studios (Jin, 2012;Miskell, 2016). Controlling the international distribution and exhibition has given Hollywood studios additional control over their audiences (Miller, Govil, McMurria, Maxwell, & Wang, 2005).…”

Managing uncertainty in creative industries: Film sequels and Hollywood’s profitability, 1988–2015

“…It is noticeable that some of the most successful franchises in our data period (such as the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and to a lesser extent the movies associated with the Marvel cinematic universe) were based on stories and characters already well known to international audiences and which featured leading stars from outside the United States. These are productions which score highly on the international orientation index which Miskell (2016) showed to be strongly associated with a film's propensity to attract international audiences in the studio era.…”

Identifying Cinema Cultures and Audience Preferences

“…The assumption here is that indigenous producers usually find a way of incorporating cultural specificities into the content of their films. 16 For this reason, a producer/writer/director who is engaged in making a film targeted at, say, a Dutch audience, recognises the unlikelihood of it attracting audiences outside of the Dutch/Flemish speaking world. Accordingly, by identifying those films…”