The Dominance of the Big Six

The Dominance of the Big Six

The big six operate as the major film production and distributors in Hollywood, this includes; Sony Pictures, 21st Century Fox, Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, The Walt Disney Company and Warner Bros. These companies each have different divisions such as 20th Century Fox who have a television network which has been the home to such popular shows as ‘The Simpsons’ which had a film spin-off in 2007 and has proven to be a lucrative franchise for the company, Rupert Murdoch who owns 20th Century Fox has utilised the different divisions of the company so that the 20th Century Fox brand name is known to the public and is recognised worldwide. The Walt Disney Company is another company that has created a successful brand, by gearing the majority of its films towards families they have made an impressive amount of animated films that are timeless and multi-generational, Disney also has multiple theme parks that are based around the films made by the company allowing the audiences to interact with the products, in recent years Disney has made many lucrative deals by acquiring productions and franchises for example in 2008 they acquired the rights to Marvel Films in 2009 for $4 billion and have since made $5 billion since the purchase, also in November 2012 they bought Lucasfilm for another $4 billion giving Disney the rights to the Star Wars franchise and Indiana Jones two franchises that are incredibly popular with audiences, other purchases include the television network ABC for $19 billion dollars. Although they are American based their presence is still dominant in other countries. Together these companies constitute an ‘oligopoly’ on the film industry, this means that collectively they dominate the industry holding 80% of the US/Canada market share of the film industry.

For people working within the big six this is an advantage as it allows for much higher budgets for large productions making it so that the studios can release their summer ‘blockbusters’ that are more mainstream titles geared towards a wider audience. Smaller production companies will not rely on the financial power that the big six hold in the industry and will choose to release titles with narratives that although may be obscure in some cases but still based in reality, the trouble with such productions is that they don’t have the money to innovate technologically within the industry and that is something that the big six particularly have done over the many decades, James Cameron’s Avatar was a huge hit partially because of the hype surround the 3D effects in the film. However, the independent productions that are now being made replicate those that the big six were once releasing when the motion picture industry was first conceived, the big six have been criticised for releasing films with similar themes and remaking films from their back-catalogue.

The big six use their power within the industry to promote their ideological views and promote Americanisation within the media often do not take any creative risks or confront certain ‘ideologies’ in order protect the brand name, this is an advantage for smaller productions because they can create projects to question American ideologies, for example Michael Moore produces documentaries that tackle topics such as gun control in ‘Bowling For Columbine’ and ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’, these documentaries although produced on low budgets and by small production companies proved immensely popular and grew more popular through word of mouth which for smaller productions is a good thing because they cannot afford a  marketing campaign.

A disadvantage for the big six is in certain cases big budget blockbusters can flop and therefore result in huge financial losses to the company, one recent notable example is ‘The Lone Ranger’ which was released by The Walt Disney Company on a budget of $250 million and its worldwide gross being just $243 million despite its huge promotional campaign.

Overall I feel that competition is necessary in the industry and the fact that the big six shadow over many of the independent production companies is a bad thing as the same ideas are constantly being recycled by the big six who stick to a formula that results in a large gross. The industry shouldn't be based around profit and should be about taking risks on projects that may be considered better critically but may not have the largest profits that the big blockbusters bring in.