Thursday 7 February 2013
Karate Kid Remake Article
In 2010, after buying the rights off Columbia Pictures, Sony produced a remake of the classic film The Karate Kid. The remake made a hell of a lot more money than the original. The remake made $359,126,022 alone with the original raking in a measly $90,815,558. However the remake had a lot more ways of advertising and promoting their film. The remake had many synergies and ways of advertising that helped promotion consisting of a wide range of merchandise. Sony realised the huge popularity in internet services and interactive services as approximately 3 billion people have regular access to the internet however 30 years ago when the first Karate Kid film was made the internet didn’t even exist. So Sony released the trailer on YouTube and has approximately 7 and a half million views, this would’ve been a huge factor in its box office success and popularity and those 7 and a half million people that know about the film could easily double or triple due to word of mouth and extra trailers on all sorts of TV channels etc. Sony, who also specialise in gaming and online gaming played to their strengths and created a smartphone app as they realised the amount of people owning smartphones and could access the game was rapidly increasing. They also decided to release a soundtrack for the film. The main featured song involves Jaden Smith who is obviously in the film but it also features Justin Bieber who is arguably one of the most famous artists in the world and this would’ve generated a lot of interest and most likely a lot of money just from that song alone. Another reason why a remake was made was because Sony wanted to spread their audience over a greater distance. They did this by setting it in China and having stars such as Jackie Chan in it that will interest the Asian audience. This factor using stars will make people go to see the film worldwide, therefore making more money. In the same way they star Jaden Smith who is a very famous actor himself but he is obviously the son of huge worldwide famous actor Will Smith and this will generate a lot of interest to see how Jaden and his dad compare. The original was set in Los Angeles so it only really appealed to the Western and English audience starring people that only those audiences will be aware of. I also think that doing a remake of the film from 30 years ago helped the popularity of the new film as it probably increased the target audience of the film. The target audience for the first film would’ve been teenagers to around mid-20 year olds. However a lot of middle aged men would’ve seen the first film and heard about a remake coming out and would therefore be interested in how the two films compare and could remind them and bring back memories of when they were younger. So Sony made a good move there by increasing the range of target audience.
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