Working Title

Tom Royston

Ownership

• In 1992 Polygram became the companies corporate banker, the London based company was called Polygram filmed entertainment. In 1999 Polygram was sold to Seagram and then merged with MCA Music Entertainment to form Universal Music Group, the parent company of Polygram is NBC Universal.

• The company is well known for having a very small limited amount of staff to use and with a budget of £25 million. A subsidiary of the company is WTTV productions who oversees the company.

• Now the production company is known as Universal Studios.

Public Reaction

• The reaction to the takeovers at working title were great. In that it is a true hit factory - a British based company that consistently produces box office smashes that made a huge amount of money in cinemas right around the world. After producing such films as; Paul, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Shaun Of The Dead, Green Zone Robin Hood, Four Weddings And A Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones's Diary and Love Actually.

• The company has produced more than 70 films since its launch in 1983, with a combined gross in excess of $2.5 billion worldwide; its films have won four Oscars and 20 Baftas. This year, the company was awarded the prestigious Michael Balcon Bafta Award for its contribution to the British film industry.

• It employs just 42 full time staff, split between the main Working Title production arm and its low-budget offshoot WT2, run by Natascha Wharton, which since 1999 has produced films like Billy Elliot and Ali G Indahouse.

Films Associated With Working Title.

• Working Title films made a lot of big films a lot of them are either comedy films or romance. Appearing to a target audience of of all ages and both sexes. Films like Notting Hill and Atonement are good examples of this whilst Paul and Shaun Of The Dead appear to the younger audiences.

• Paul was a box office smash! After having a budget of $40 million and making a box office revenue of $97.5million it shows.

• Whilst Notting Hill perhaps Working Titles biggest success had a budget of $47 million and made $363,889,700 in box office revenue.

• However, Four Weddings and A Funeral was the most profitable film out of them all, after making $245,700,832 in box office revenue and having a budget of only $4.4million.

Synergies

• Being so deeply associated with Universal Studios has a great benefit, being such a world wide renounced production company this will assist Working Title to work on a bigger film having a bigger budget and therefore maybe being able to make a bigger profit overall.

• associating Universal Studios with working class allows other branches of universal studios to advertise that product in the opening trailers sequences and allows for other Universal Studios films to become available to a wider audience across the globe.

• Having a Working Titles production film broadcast in a cinema or on a DVD of a blockbuster such as, back to the future will really benefit the company a great deal.

Cross Media Convergence

• With films created by working titles and distributed by universal studios cross media is really important as a film can always be made into a game and put on the internet as an online game and have its own website which really is another branch of advertisement just trying to make more money and revenue by cross media convergence and really promotes the name of universal more and more, globally.

• A TV series can always be made from a film and the film can be advertised across television as well as on the internet, games and books.

Technological Issues

• There are a few technological issues in producing and distributing a film such as; illegal downloads and piracy. Having such hi-tech equipment to do the required job costs a lot of money and will never come cheap. Especially using special effects and other artificial elements of the film.