LO1: Task 4: Cross media product case study

The Adaptation I have studied is the movie and comic book of the antihero 'Deadpool'. This adaptation was proven very popular with its release in February of 2016 to its mass audience of comic book fans from the ages of 15- 40, this provided a wide range of different marketing and cross promotion to gather their wide target audience’s attention. Deadpool worked to create more marketing and gather more profits for example they came up with Deadpool inspired merchandise and games on Playstation4 for example which gave 20th Century Fox a higher profit margin. They all cross promoted on social media pages such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and has their own Snapchat page which has information on the release, they also had their own Snapchat Deadpool filter which was around the lease of the film to promote it more successfully

Due to the mass of advertising 20th Century fox did it made the Deadpool movie very successful which then allegedly made around $300 Million Worldwide on its weekend debut. Both above the line and below the line advertising methods were used to create such a big phenomenon, for example above the line methods like the use of posters and billboards around the World and in major cities to show the release of the film, this was to get the mass target audience a glimpse of what the film will be like and the fans who have been waiting this whole time. They also therefore used below the line methods of advertising Deadpool with the use of social media pages such as Facebook and Twitter where you could share and give your thoughts on the movie which made it very effective and a form of promotion which is word of mouth, this meant more people would see and hear of the movie because nearly everyone in the world uses social media. Synergy also played a major part in the marketing and distribution in the form of a game which was released in 2013 although it was before the release of the film it still acted as a form of synergy and marketing towards the movie as people who played the game already have a fan base of this therefore are definite of watching the movie when its released even without seeing the trailer etc. Although the game wasn’t widely received when it was brought out it has now been more successful due to the release of the movie as more and more found out about it, it is rated 8.3 on IMDB and 9 on Steam which is widely popular within the gaming community.

A very popular piece of advertising was the 12 days or Deadpool From December 14 through December 25, every day had a unique piece of content leading up to a new trailer for the movie. This consisted of gifs, posters, emojis, teaser trailers and then the final trailer on Christmas day which got a lot of attention as it showed with the lead up to it. Also as the date of release was coming closer they started with more advertising techniques such as allowing five TV networks ran custom ads during three-hour blocks, customized to the demographic of the programming being run. “Workaholics,” “Tosh.0,” and “Golden Girls” were all featured in this campaign. 20^th Century Fox also took advantage of the release date’s proximity to the Super Bowl.  Not only did they buy a commercial during the game, but they also ran several live promotions over the course of the weekend.

The marketing for Deadpool has an audience range of 13- 30-year-old male and females of an ABC1 audience, although the film had a much wider audience when the release came out it was more focused on males of the late teenage years as Deadpool character was quite witty and dark it suited that range of audiences more. Also with the advertising of Deadpool emojis this suited the younger generation who use them daily when talking to friends on social media for example. It reached an older generation as it already had a solid fan base of those who like to read comic books when they were younger etc and families who watch superhero films with their children however although this film was classified at 15 year olds younger generations would watch it is as it’s a superhero film. An ABC1 audience would watch this film at the cinema as it is not of working class but those with a higher spending power and it shows the characters of this.

Audiences can access this adaptation due to technological convergence as over the years we have technologies working together to produce higher quality stuff, so for example Deadpool can be accessed on Sky movies or NowTv for audiences to watch it whenever they want at the comfort of their own home, this is gathering in more money for 20^th Century Fox as its already 61^st highest grossing film it is getting more audience views at the same time, also with streaming which we wouldn’t have been able to do before technological convergence came around. Several black box devices such as Smart TVs, laptops, mobile phones allow us to download movies on it so audiences can watch it when its more convenient for them. These news ways of viewing films due to web 2.0 are highly beneficial for not just the producer but the consumer as the producers are still gathering money in and the audience are time shifting to decide when they want to watch the film.

Overall Deadpool was a very successful film as it gathered $783.1 million, against a budget of $58 million which broke numerous records, as well as being the ninth highest grossed film on 2016. On Twitter the movies page is also very successful for a movie with 697k followers and with the tweets with the hashtag Deadpool still being used every day it has become a household name, also with 9 awards in 2016/2017 it has become widely popular