Working Title Films was co-founded by producers Tim Bevan and Sarah Radclyffe in 1983. In 1992, PolyGram became the company's corporate backer. Radclyffe left Working Title, and Eric Fellner, a fellow independent film producer, joined the company. The company produced a variety of films for PolyGram's London-based production company PolyGram Filmed Entertainment. PolyGram Films became a major Hollywood competitor. In 1999, PolyGram was sold to Seagram and merged with MCA Music Entertainment, to form Universal Music Group. PolyGram Films was merged and sold to Universal Studios in 1999.
Although contractually allowed to produce any film with a budget of up to $25 million, on a practical basis, Bevan and Fellner consult with studio executive at Working Title's parent company NBC Universal.
WT2 Productions
In 1999, Bevan and Fellner launched a subsidiary company named Working Title 2 Productions, commonly known as WT2. The company is an independent film production arm run by Natascha Wharton, and has produced films that include Billy Elliot, Shaun of the Dead and The Calcium Kid.
Being a conglomerate of universal they’re able to spend a greater amount of money of which would be used to invest on a greater amount of films, so that they’re able to use new and upcoming technologies for example 3D, blue-ray, better cameras for example in the film green zone they used silicon cameras which are the size of a match box therefore allowing them to get more effective action shots that usually wouldn’t be able to get with normal cameras.
With Working Title being part of a conglomerate with Universal they get far more funding to spent on the cast and directors. This is a huge advantage to a film business, however spending more money on more well known directors then gives you the disadvantage of the director deciding more of the film, taking over it more. Then again with higher experienced cast and crew you are more likely to get a far better effective and successful film.
With the higher budget you are able to appeal to more genres if you have a weak budget or are not part of a conglomerate then you’re unable to do this for example Warp films can only cater for genres like social realism whereas Working title can produce films for a vaster genre for example: the dramatic, thriller and action, which means that they can gain more audiences like films in Hollywood where they have the funding to get animation films etc.
A issue that Working title may face as they’re a conglomerate to Universal is that universal have a lot of control over them, meaning that they’re controlled and restricted in what they can do, so the films are less artistic in order to overcome this issue working title brought working title 2 into action this was created still as a conglomerate so they still receive the funding from universal but get more artistic points for example Billy Elliot so this weakness was overcome.
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