Page 99 - The Disneyization of Society

THE DISNEYIZATION OF SOCIETY

that during the period 1986–95, 25% of box office top five releases in the
United States were for children. 32 The percentage was even higher in several
90 other countries: Slovakia, Poland, Puerto Rico, Egypt, Luxembourg, Sweden, the
UK, Austria, France, Switzerland and Japan. Moretti compared the situation
with the mid-1950s when he was a child and found there were extremely few
children’s films then. In the mid-1950s, not one film for children was in the
Variety top 20 for the year, although as he points out, 20,000 Leagues Under the
Sea (a Disney film) and Around the World in 80 Days could be construed as for
children. One factor behind the considerable growth in children’s films could
well be their potential for merchandising and other spin-offs including tele-
vision series.
This is not to suggest that films made more or less exclusively for adults are
devoid of merchandise potential. Estée Lauder, for example, marketed a makeup
range called Face of Evita, capitalizing on the popularity of Evita in 1996.
However, according to Pat Wyatt, at the time president of licensing for Fox, family
films have the greatest merchandise potential, especially when there is a fantasy
element to the film. In part, this is because children’s films with a strong fantasy
element include many non-human characters which, according to Wyatt ‘do
better than representations of people because kids can project a broader fantasy
into their play’. 33 A further problem with much merchandise based on people in
films is that actors are sometimes difficult about agreeing to their likenesses, as
well as the problem of getting the image right initially.
The Harry Potter films serve as a reminder of the profitability of merchandising.
The release of the first film was accompanied by a raft of merchandise, such as
34
games, a Lego Hogwarts Castle (which performed particularly well ), t-shirts, and
a Hornby Hogwarts Express train set, as well as the appearance of Potter-related
images on a variety of goods, such as bubble bath. Hamleys, the huge toy empo-
35
rium in London, even opened a Harry Potter shop within the store. It was in a
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position to sell over 200 lines of Harry Potter merchandise. A Nottingham com-
pany, which had exclusive rights for manufacturing official Potter socks, was
turned into the fastest-growing sock-maker in England around the time of the
first Potter film when 50,000 pairs were being sold per week. 37 As a result of her
share of the vast array of merchandise for sale, it was projected that the author of
the series of books, J.K. Rowling, would become the first billionaire author and
that at the very least, her earnings from merchandising would exceed her royal-
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ties which had already made her one of the wealthiest women in Britain. It was
calculated in 2003 that Harry Potter merchandise was bringing in revenue of
£1 billion per year and that J.K. Rowling would earn £10 million from quidditch
turning into a computer game. 39
However, by no means all children’s films, let alone all films, generate success-
ful lines of merchandising and there have been some interesting and even sur-
prising failures. If a movie flops, like Judge Dredd, even though based on a popular