What franchise has had the closest cultural impact since Star Wars?

Re: What franchise has had the closest cultural impact since Star Wars

 

Re: What franchise has had the closest cultural impact since Star Wars

Surely you remember "Lost", Set? You know, that TV show with overdeveloped clusterfuck of a plot which ended with the worst series finale since Enterprise?

 

Re: What franchise has had the closest cultural impact since Star Wars

Please some of us are trying to forgot the ending no need to bring it up and remind us. It was also bad luck for it to air later in the same week in the UK as the finale of "Ashes to Ashes" which had a similiar ending. BTW the Ashes to Ashes one was better.

 

Re: mocap technology

There you go...

So all that AVATAR really introduced was Real 3D.
And looking at how 3D pictures fare today at the box office, it was not the revolution Mr. Cameron hoped for.

Funny: Titanic 3D was released last week, and was beaten at the BO by "The Hunger Games" (3rd week number 1), AND: American Reunion...
There is the interest in seeing 3D films...

I am glad 3D did not succeed. You do not need 3D to tell a good story, and without 3D AVATAR falls apart completely and reveals how bad it actually is...
But that's a whole different story, back to topic...

 

Re: What franchise has had the closest cultural impact since Star Wars

It believe Titanic 3D will have long legs. Cameron's movies tend to be like that. Titanic never broke any opening records back in the nineties, but it held #1 for 15 straight weeks, IIRC.

For now it seems to be less successful than TPM 3D (it took it 2 days to earn what TPM did in its opening day), but boxoffice mojo predicts it'll reach a total up to 100 mil.

 

Re: What franchise has had the closest cultural impact since Star Wars

Could be tricky, with all the summer blockbusters at the start.
And don't forget TPM targeted young children (the next generation of STAR WARS fans).
Titanic does not have the same appeal.
I don't doubt it will be successful for a re-release, but 100 million sounds just a little too optimistic IMHO.

 

Re: What franchise has had the closest cultural impact since Star Wars

Are you on the street? If so, that answers the question.

 

Re: What franchise has had the closest cultural impact since Star Wars

Is that like a metaphor? Like "in the closet" or something?

 

Re: What franchise has had the closest cultural impact since Star Wars

I was listening to a podcast this week and the host mentioned that the Harry Potter book series got people to get excited about reading books again. Yes they were intended for children but the books sold and made $.

Yes it had a large cultural impact.
from a business perpective HP made $
The franchise revenue is here:

Total Harry Potter Franchise Revenue
with each of the films broken down at the link.

compared with Star Wars:
Star Wars Total Franchise Revenue

 

Re: What franchise has had the closest cultural impact since Star Wars

I gotta go with Harry Potter as well.

It was hugely successful. Like SW it made a particular genre into a mainstream phenom. And just like SW changed the way that movie studios did business, HP changed publishing.

It also had an effect on the movie business. HP was one of, if not the first, instance of the studio going out of its way to make the author happy and doing what it could to insure feality to the source material to keep the fans happy. If the HP movies hadn't been successful, for better or worse, you wouldn't have seen the Twilight franchise or the Hunger Games movies they way you did.

That being said, the poster arguing for the Simpsons makes some good points as well.

 

Re: What franchise has had the closest cultural impact since Star Wars

What Harry Potter does not have, or will never have, is the sheer quantity of products attached to it. Star Wars stayed in the popular imagination because of toys, novels, collectables and all the other products attached to it. Disney has done something similar with its Princesses line--the Disney movies have definitely had a larger cultural impact than Star Wars. The only other comparable movie franchise (in the sense of spin off products and cultural impact) is The Wizard of Oz.

What Star Wars has going for it is that it goes far beyond the Science Fiction genre that most of us here on this board are so wrapped up in.

 

Re: What franchise has had the closest cultural impact since Star Wars

Behind by quite a few laps, it's probably Harry Potter.

But Rambo should be somewhere up there too.

 

Re: What franchise has had the closest cultural impact since Star Wars

If Rowling was smart just like Lucas and to make Potter immortal just as Lucas is going to make Wars - she'd sell the rights to another studio like Universal and they would make Potter live forever as well.

Especially since she has no interest in writing any more Potter books.

 

Re: What franchise has had the closest cultural impact since Star Wars

She might change her mind in the next twenty or thirty years.

 

Re: What franchise has had the closest cultural impact since Star Wars

If Rowling doesn't write any more books, then I wouldn't be surprised if the Harry Potter film series gets rebooted eventually.

Sean

 

Re: What franchise has had the closest cultural impact since Star Wars

In an interview last year she left the door open to another Potter story.

 

Re: What franchise has had the closest cultural impact since Star Wars

Or somebody could step in and do another take on the kids-at-a-supernatural-school schtick, which was hardly original when Rowling did her take on it.

Something more angst with vampires and werewolves as school kids along with the witches, that would hit big. Like it or not.

 

Re: What franchise has had the closest cultural impact since Star Wars

Harry Potter meets Twilight? Sounds like a winner.

Sean

 

Re: What franchise has had the closest cultural impact since Star Wars

The Magicians. Lev Grossman.

 

Re: What franchise has had the closest cultural impact since Star Wars

One sign that you've done something with deep impact is if you spawn imitators. Star Wars certainly did that, as did Harry Potter. This usually creates a 2nd tier of successful ripoffs riding on the coat-tails. Galactica (classic) would classify as that for SW, and something like Percy Jackson would be the Harry Potter equivalent.