The Dark Knight Rises. Reasons Behind Movies Commercial Success Essay

The Dark Knight Rises. Reasons Behind Movies Commercial Success - Essay Example It has been claimed that the movie did not fulfill the expectations in terms of revenues and quality of its predecessors. However, despite multiple claims, the movie is a big commercial hit earning revenues over US$ 1 billion. The Dark Knight trilogy has been a significant source of revenues for Warner Brothers. Analysis of the commercial factors underlying The Dark Knight Rises’ success indicates that more than effective marketing, it was the legacy of the movie that gave it a grand opening despite various daunting events like the shooting incident. The Dark Knight Rises brought ticket revenues worth US$ 1.075 billion to Warner Brothers and movie maker Christopher Nolan (Hughes, 2012a). The question arises that despite having receiving its fair share of criticism from experts and general public, what are the factors that made this movie join the elite group of over 1 billion group. A critical analysis of the movie’s progress indicated that a perception of a product being sold has a greater impact on its sales. This is precisely the reason why manufacturers and producers play special attention to product placement phenomenon while marketing a product. Same stands true for Batman movie franchise as well. The legacy, fan base and historical characters with success of all previous Batman movies provides this franchise a lot of credibility amongst the viewers. Besides the huge success of previous Batman movie ‘The Dark Night’ and the phenomenal success of Joker followed by the untimely death of Heath Ledger, what drove the masses to the theaters was perception that this would be the last Batman movie. The legacy of the Batman Series was a substantial factor that would have been enough to draw masses to movie cinemas. Like other studios, Warner Brothers capitalizes on brand equity of its strong franchises and The Dark Knight Rises is a simple example of this trend. For a franchise that was showing a downturn after Batman and Robin in 1997, Nolan-Warner partnership turned out to be the last resort. Arrival of Nolan in Warner Brothers has made Batman into a character which is not only adored by comic fans but also by those who have a greater liking for more realistic action movies. The Batman trilogy has managed to bring overall box office receipts worth over 3 billion with box office sales being the indicator of franchise’s performance (Hughes, 2012b). It is important to note that other than the movie itself, Nolan’s brand equity is also another major factor that brought fans to the cinemas. In the recent years, Hollywood has focused more on ‘going big’ in terms of marketing and Warner Brothers’ technique is no different. Aggressive marketing campaign through TC, radio, social media, billboards and print media manage to engage public and create the desired anticipation for the brand launch (Eliashberg, Elbrese, and Leenders, 2004). Before the movie launch, there was a well-orchestrated series of movie’s official website launch, tease trailers containing original six minutes of the movie, page-length advertisements in newspaper etc. In addition to that, an interesting product placement strategy used by Warner Brothers was to attach the movie’s trailers with other successful ventures like The Avengers and Mission Impossible-Ghost Protocol. Another important part of this marketing campaign was movie’s viral marketing strategy that was highly complex yet interesting enough to engage millions