PolyGram Filmed Entertainment and Working Title Films: The making of a Film Studio and its Production Label

TY - JOUR

T1 - PolyGram Filmed Entertainment and Working Title Films

T2 - The making of a Film Studio and its Production Label

AU - Townsend, Nathan

PY - 2018

Y1 - 2018

N2 - In the 1990s, the London-based production company, Working Title Films, become synonymous with a brand of globally oriented popular cinema which is identifiably British in content while also embracing many of the aesthetic and cultural forms of Hollywood filmmaking. Notable films include Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Bean (1997), The Borrowers (1997) and Notting Hill (1999). This paper examines the origins of this production strategy between 1988 and 1993. During these six years, Working Title was transformed from an independently owned and managed production company which largely produced Channel 4-funded ‘social art cinema’ to a subsidiary label of the nascent film studio, PolyGram Filmed Entertainment (PFE). Taking the approach of business history, I will explore PFE’s key innovations, particularly the development of the so-called ‘control sheet’, a creative and commercial filter used to inform green-light decisions. In so doing, a complex and dynamic picture of filmmaking within a newly formed studio system emerges. Significantly, control sheet-like business practices were also adopted by the major Hollywood studios. Thus, the logic of the control sheet continues to underpin the current media ecology of Hollywood at large, including that of Working Title’s current parent company, Universal.

AB - In the 1990s, the London-based production company, Working Title Films, become synonymous with a brand of globally oriented popular cinema which is identifiably British in content while also embracing many of the aesthetic and cultural forms of Hollywood filmmaking. Notable films include Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Bean (1997), The Borrowers (1997) and Notting Hill (1999). This paper examines the origins of this production strategy between 1988 and 1993. During these six years, Working Title was transformed from an independently owned and managed production company which largely produced Channel 4-funded ‘social art cinema’ to a subsidiary label of the nascent film studio, PolyGram Filmed Entertainment (PFE). Taking the approach of business history, I will explore PFE’s key innovations, particularly the development of the so-called ‘control sheet’, a creative and commercial filter used to inform green-light decisions. In so doing, a complex and dynamic picture of filmmaking within a newly formed studio system emerges. Significantly, control sheet-like business practices were also adopted by the major Hollywood studios. Thus, the logic of the control sheet continues to underpin the current media ecology of Hollywood at large, including that of Working Title’s current parent company, Universal.

KW - PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, Working Title Films, UK film industry, US film industry.

U2 - 10.1080/01439685.2017.1358415

DO - 10.1080/01439685.2017.1358415

M3 - Article

SN - 0143-9685

VL - 38

SP - 555

EP - 583

JO - Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

JF - Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

IS - 3

ER -