Early franchises and series such as the James Bond films and others often had recurring characters, settings, plot formulas, but predominantly acted as stand alone stories.
[2] These media franchises had a what Bryan Hikari Hartzheim, James Fleury and Stephen Mamber describe as a seismic impact on the film industry.
[4] Church continued that a contemporary film franchise was multi-film series that not only pushes the narrative forward or backwards through sequels and prequels, but also includes expansion through ancillary intertexts.
This allowed for a range from parallel storylines in spinoffs to re-evaluations of narratives in remakes or reboots, suggesting that a franchise has less to do with the longevity of a series, but to the proliferation that extends beyond linear development.
[5] Derek Johnson further explained that a media franchise denotes "multiplied cultural production" and Daniel Herbert has specified that the term refers to a particularly "industrial" logic designed "to expand and spread" an intellectual property (IP) into an array of texts.
[11] Daniel Herbert expanded on this, suggesting that how Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) "may be a single film, but it held the responsibility of representing and supporting an entire media franchise"[12] This extended to the metatext of franchises, such as the video game Aliens: Colonial Marines (2013) was poorly received by critics who noted its lack of narrative continuity and connection with the film series.
[16] Early cinematic universes like this were rare, showing up sporadically in subsequent decades, such as in Kevin Smith's View Askewniverse.
[14] Film series in the 1970s exhibited little discernible long-term planning, and often feature narrative incoherence like ignoring the death of Bond's bride in Diamonds Are Forever (1971) in Live and Let Die (1973).
[18] With the New Hollywood replacing the studio system, conglomerates began to exploit their various film and television intellectual property rights, allowing for multimedia reiteration of works that herald a new age of what Hartzheim, Mamber and Fleury described as "strategically open" and "high-concept entertainment" era that would generate long-term audience appeal through franchising films likes Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977).
[19] The introduction of home video in the 1980s introduced older films to new generations of audiences, leading to conglomerates to develop belated sequels like The Color of Money (1986).
[2] The media franchises had a what Bryan Hikari Hartzheim, Mamber, and Fleury describe as a seismic impact on the film industry.
[3] The growing influence of digital technology redefined the entertainment industry as content was no longer exclusive to traditional media companies.
[22] Media trades continued to document stories ranging from celebratory to panicked depending on the box office fate of various sequels, prequels, remakes, reboots and spin-offs.
This would lead to video games that served as direct sequels to films such as Konami's The Goonies II (1987) and prequels like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003).
[20] Later digital age franchises such as The Matrix and the MCU focused on transmedia storytelling, where audiences are required to seek out the narrative across multiple forms of media.
[26] Ben Fritz stated these international audiences preferred "big budget films full of visual effects" and proven "brands" over most American dramas, comedies and other mid-budget productions.
[28] Chinese companies also began investing in American film production, leading to more direct changes, such as supporting roles for actors like Angelababy in Independence Day: Resurgence (2016) and Li Bingbing in The Meg (2018).