Black Panther Case Study

Black Panther Case Study

The film “Black Panther” comes out on February 12^th, 2018 from the production company Marvel Studios.  Marvel Studios have been founded 25 years ago in 1993 and they created films based on Marvel comics mainly by Stan Lee. They are responsible for creating blockbuster films such as The Avengers Series, Spider-Man Homecoming (the “Spider-Man” franchise is licensed to Sony Pictures), Thor, Captain America, Guardians of the Galaxy, Doctor Strange, Iron Man and the Hulk. Marvel Studios is now a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios which is a division of the conglomerate The Walt Disney Company from 2009.

The main characters are made up of black people: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, Forest Whitaker, Angela Bassett and Daniel Kaluuya. Danai Gurira is best known for her role on The Walking Dead, Forest Whitaker and his Rogue One: A Star Wars Story role, and Danial Kaluuya's role in the horror film Get Out. The reason why the director, Ryan Coogler, hired these cast members to represent the Black Panther Party. They are an African American Revolutionary Party and their purpose is to patrol the African American neighbourhoods and to protect residents from the acts of police brutality.

The production budget is not officially announced but it is estimated to be 200 million dollars. It must include the pre-production, filming, post-production and promotion. This includes buying the rights to the script, the actor’s salaries, production staff salaries, set construction, special effects, wardrobe, craft services, and marketing. This approximately costs 106 million dollars but all of these attributes can vary, for example, the size of the actors, the amount of special effects that need to be used or how much the rights of the film costs.

Marvel Studios has a wide range of platforms to promote their film. They have made 3 trailers and have released them on YouTube as well as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and they have created an advertisement on Snapchat. The official trailer has had 18 million views, 7.2 million views on Facebook and 103 posts and 203 thousand followers on Instagram. The trailers have also been shown on big television companies (BBC and ITV for example) in the UK. Black Panther has several promotional posters in cinemas and on London’s transport like TFL. They also have billboards in America with some of them popping out of the billboard.

Black Panther has a wide range of licensed products for Marvel to sell to promote the film. This includes stuffed toys based on the Black Panther’s suit, masks, claws, mugs, shirts, caps, bags, the upper torso of black panther’s suit, action figures et cetera. The film needs to sell its merchandise so that they can pay the people who have worked on the movie. For example, actors, director, production team, composer as well as the marketing team will all have their cut mainly from the licensed products. The rest of the money will be for Marvel, however, Disney will get some of their shares too.

Marvel has managed to get a partnership with the car manufacturer Lexus. Black Panther’s flagship is the Lexus’ “LS 500 F Sport luxury saloon”. Both brands can promote each other to increase their sales and their profit. Lexus has used the characters from the Black Panther film to advertise the performance and the luxury of the car. In addition, the film takes this opportunity to show off its characters as well as what the audience can expect from it like action and adventure.

Disney uses the money they get from Marvel Studios for them to help the other divisions within its business. The money that they have gotten help other production companies like Lucasfilm, Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. The money will also assist Disney Parks and Resorts, Media Networks, and Consumer Products and Interactive Media. Those main divisions get split into many other subsidiaries as well as having some of the money for their revenue. The many subsidiaries that Disney owns are the reason why they are the world second largest media conglomerate and their expansion will only get greater over the years.