Production - Patterns and Issues

Case Study: Notting Hill
UK Release: 21st may 1999

Notting Hill was a very succesful film, wih excellent reviews from the media, and was one of the highest grossing British films.
The Romantic Comedy starred Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts alongside other well-known actors such as Emma Chambers and Hugh Bonneville.

Synopsis
An ordinary bloke (Hugh Grant) who works in a book shop in Notting Hill comes face to face with an international film star (Julia Roberts). They fall in love...but the road is a steep and rocky one, coupled with ludicrous flat-mates, dinner parties, and the press on their tails. Can the most famous film star in the world fall for the man in the street?

Production

The main companies involved were Working Title Films, Polygram Film Entertainment, Bookshop productions and Notting Hill Pictures.

The Screenplay was written by Working Title's very own in house screen writer, who had also written the hugely sucessful Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Notting Hill Awards

.Audience award for most popular film at the BAFTAS (2000)
.Best comedy film at the British comedy awards.
.Best sountrack at the Brit awards.
.Best British Film at the Empire awards.
.Best British actor at the Empire awards.
.Roger Mitchell got the best British Director award for the film at the empire awards.

Distribution

Notting Hill was distributed by MCA, Universal and PolyGram film entertainment. The film i think was aimed at women of all ages, as well as young couples and married couples. The genre is a romantic comedy and follows the traditional british rom-com values in which 2 people from different backgrounds meet and fall in love.

The main poster used to distribute the film features Hugh Grant walking past a billboard poster of Julia Roberts. The image of Julia Roberts is much larger than Hugh Grants is used to show Julia Roberts character has a higher status, Aswell as being on a billboard, showing how she is famous. The colour (or lack there of) is very unusual compared to other film posters, with colour only showing on Hugh Grants clothes and the names of the actors on the top of the poster.

Working Title Films

Working Title Films was established in 1984, where a year previous New Zealand born Tim Bevan set up a music video production company.

Eric Fellner also started in music videos, making them for the like of Fleetwood Mac and Duran Duran. He then went to work at British production company Initial Pictures, he left initial to join Bevan in 1992.

Working Titles brakthrough film was released in 1994, Four Weddings And A Funeral, a romantic comedy. There was a long dry period where many of their films were not sucessful internationally. They soon worked through it and produced many sucessful films such as:

.Among them

.French Kiss

.Dead Man Walking

.Fargo

.Elizabeth

In 1999 Working Title signed a reported $600 million deal with film giant Universal Pictures, this gave the pair to commision films with a budget of up to $35 million without even consulting their pay masters. It seems that Romantic comedies are what they are best at.

Their most recent success is the opening of WT2, an offshoot to design smaller budget films.