A film franchise has been described as a film series which not only continued the narrative through sequels and prequels, but also included expansion through ancillary intertexts which could include spinoffs, remakes and reboots. These formats did not have to exist as films either, and could be transmedial story telling, through other elements such as novels, video games and other works.
While some early film classical Hollywood era would spawn a film series, such as Tarzan of the Apes (1918), there were generally few series. Others were lower budget material was based on brands such as Superman as film serials and radio dramas. 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. As time went on, audiences values began to change, leading to a greater demand for more narrative and in-world consistency between films and their adjacent media, leading to their reception in either format could effect the development of future films in a franchise.
As conglomerates began to exploit their various film and television intellectual property rights, this allowed for multimedia reiteration of works that herald a new age of what that would generate long-term audience appeal through film franchises like Jaws and Star Wars. Production of franchises continued through the 1980s becoming more in the 1990s with film series like Batman (1989–1997) and other productions led to the rise of tentpole films in the late 1990s and 2000s.
By the 21st century, the conglomeration of American film and television industries favored film franchises over original content.[1] Various financially factors in Hollywood filmmaking led to the development of film franchies over lower budget an independent films that would carry greater financial risks. [2] These media franchises had a what Bryan Hikari Hartzheim, James Fleury and Stephen Mamber describe as a seismic impact on the film industry.[3] Journalist Ben Fritz went as far to say in 2018 that the franchise film era was the most meaningful revolution in film industry since the studio system had ended in the 1950s.[3] The change of dominance of film franchises effected previous forms of making films such as the star system and with a greater emphasis on films set in a shared universe and more unity in narrative in the subtext material in the film franchises. The global box office of Hollywood film franchises became dependent that it had franchises focusing attention on Chinese film markets, and would adapt some of their material to these audiences and later collaborate with production companies in the country.