Warp films and working titles film comparisons

1. WARP FILM & WORKING
TITLES FILMS CASE STUDIES
Rukayyah Robun

2. DEAD MANS SHOES:
 Paddy Considine's solider returns to his hometown with vengeance in mind in
Shane Meadows' dark tale of violence and retribution
 Dead Man's Shoes premiered at the Edinburgh Film Fesitval in August 2004 and
was released in the UK on October 1 2004. It received a BAFTA nomination for
Best British Film and eight nominations at the BIFAs. Dead Man's Shoes is
available to buy on DVD and Blu-ray .
 The film was released on the 1st october 2004 , and within the box office had a
budget of £695, 393.
 Production Companies :Warp Films , Big Arty Productions , EM Media
(executive production) and Film4 therefore the film was made by synergy.
 There were 8 distributing companies in total that distributed the film across the
globe.

3. ‘71
 A young British soldier is accidentally abandoned by his unit following
a terrifying riot on the streets of Belfast in 1971.
 ‘71 was released 10th October
 Production companies involved: Crab Apple Films ,Protagonist
Pictures (sales agent), Warp Films.
 There were 11 companies involved in the distriubtion of ‘71.

4. HOW DO THESE FILMS
REPRESENT BRITAIN?
British indie companies target smaller niche audiences because they do not have the larger budgets for
special effects to attract mainstream audiences .These smaller audiences are usually targeted by age or
gender. Warp pictures only produce films are recognisably British. They would strongly prefer producers
to shoot in Yorkshire or another Northern region of England, although if the producers feel that they
need expand on their locations to make the film more diverse they will do so for the sake of the film.
Unlike Hollywood film companies aims to make large profits from their films Warp’s main priority’s
include providing new opportunities for groups that are otherwise under-presented in the UK film
industry like actors , producers and writers .

5. MARKETING CAMPAIGN
 These three films all represent examples of art house films that grew
to become mainstream because of the publics interest and therefore their
widening in audiences. The original budgets for these films were under 5
million.

6. WORKING TITLES
Working title has been apart of Universal since 1999, when the parties signed an agreement due to
expire at the end of 2007. Despite alleged offers from Dreamworks, and Sony. working Title co-chairs
Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan signed an agreement at the end of 2007 to extend their stay at Universal
for seven more years.
Although Universal and Working Title have a healthy and productive relationship, it’s not to say that
converging with a major film Production Company doesn’t have disadvantages. For instance a British
film maker may find it difficult in making his film entirely ‘British’ if it is being financed by an
American production company, or business.
The film maker may well find himself tied down to creating a main stream film, as its only expected
that there be some sort of influence from the American side of the company. Potentially destroying
his creation, or finding it’s been manipulated in such a way it no longer resembles what he imagined
initially.

7. THE THEORY OF
EVERYTHING
 The Theory of Everything is a 2014 British biographical romantic drama film
directed by James Marsh and adapted by Anthony McCarten from the memoir Travelling
to Infinity: My Life with Stephen by Jane Wilde Hawking, which deals with her
relationship with her ex-husband, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, his diagnosis of
motor neuron disease, and his success in physics
 The Theory of Everything premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on 7
September 2014, where it opened in the official sidebar section, Special Presentations. On
10 April 2014, Focus Features acquired the distribution rights to The Theory of
Everything in the United States, with the plan of a 2014 limited theatrical release

8. PAUL
 Two British comic-book geeks traveling across the U.S. encounter an alien outside Area 51.
 The film has grossed $97,984,015 worldwide. In North America, Paul opened in March 2011
with $13,043,310. The film closed after 63 days in theaters, grossing $37,412,945.
 The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the United Kingdom on 13 June 2011 and was
released in North America on 9 August 2011. There are three versions of the film.
 The DVD release features an audio commentary with director Greg Mottola, stars Simon Pegg,
Nick Frost, Bill Hader, and producer Nira Park; 2 featurettes; "Simon's Silly Faces"; photo galleries;
storyboards and posters; and a blooper reel. The US Blu-ray release features all the DVD
supplements with nine more featurettes and a digital copy.

9. HOW DO THESE FILMS
REPRESENT BRITISH FILM?
 It has always been a great ambition of the British film industry to build itself to a level at
which it can compete with the likes of Universal and Warner Brothers, this ambition is
evidenced by the rise and eventual fall of the Rank Organisation, which attempted to vertically
integrate itself in the style of the American majors by purchasing the Odeon cinema chain
(1938), Amalgamated studios of borehamwood (1939) and the Gaumont-British picture
corporation in 1941. This formula was extremely successful for a period, but eventually even
the Rank organisation could not stand up to the American majors. Working Title has perhaps
come closer even than Arthur Rank’s massively funded corporation to achieving the same
amount of financial and critical success as the American studios, by not competing with them
but collaborating with them.

10. …
 This policy has enabled many British filmmakers such as Richard Curtis to secure the
funding necessary for their projects, (after many years spent writing Working Title’s most
successful films, Curtis was rewarded with a £30 million budget to make his debut as a
director, Love Actually in 2003) through the high profile status the company has enjoyed as a
result. This system however, has also had some negative effects. In particular on the way
British films are distributed, because of the success of Working Title’s formula of distribution,
other similar companies have followed suit, meaning that there are no fully integrated British
companies, this calls into question the true Britishness of Working Title films such as Notting
Hill (1999) which was distributed by Working Title’s parent company Universal Studios.