Chapter 842: He Who Wins the Family Market Wins the World

In early July, the previously quiet Warner Studios bustled with crowds once again. Anna Printz, Hannah Serena, Mike Dawson, Jimmy Carter, John Schwartzman, and the others returned from their vacations, gathering at the studio lot to prepare for the latest project alongside Duke.

Since no press conference had been held, swarms of reporters and paparazzi staked out the gates of Warner Studios. Everyone's car practically had to squeeze its way onto the lot.

Like Duke, however, they were already used to this kind of spectacle.

Several high-profile actors also showed up on set, including Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, and Laurence Fishburne.

Duke's new project was indeed Batman. Under constant urging from Warner Brothers, the new Batman production crew had officially formed. Like the previous installment, this one did not carry the Batman title; the project was named The Dark Knight Rises.

This would also serve as the final chapter of the new Batman trilogy.

As a sequel, high salaries for the cast were unavoidable. Christian Bale alone commanded a $20 million paycheck, and the film's estimated production budget reached as high as $250 million, making it the highest single-film investment of Duke's career.

Aside from the returning actors, Duke had already finalized a few new cast members, such as having the tall and long-legged Gal Gadot play Selina Kyle and James Franco play John Blake.

As for the film's major villain, Bane, Duke had no interest in Tom Hardy, who usually mingled in indie and art-house circles, and intended to have a genuinely massive guy play the role.

Duke actually knew full well that no matter what, Bane could never surpass the Joker.

The character of the Joker had become a classic partly because of its setup and the actor's performance, but an even more significant factor was Heath Ledger's passing.

Without Heath Ledger's passing, the Joker would never have reached its current heights. There was no doubt about that.

Duke couldn't exactly have the actor playing Bane die too; he wasn't that crazy.

In Duke's vision, this Destroyer Bane would lean more into sheer combat prowess, his ability to incite the masses, and a crazed devotion to anarchism. There was absolutely no need to dig too deeply into his psychological depths.

The Dark Knight Rises would drive the trilogy toward an epic final chapter. By the end of The Dark Knight, "Batman" was the true hero who had saved Gotham City. Yet now, he had become a superfluous existence, discarded like a worn-out shoe.

It was a destined yet conspiracy-filled ending, one that ultimately made Batman into an outright murderer who had to take responsibility for Harvey Dent's tragic death—except what the public didn't know was that Harvey hadn't merely died. He had become the vengeance-driven "Two-Face"; as a pioneer of the reform movement who hated evil, he had paid a massive price for the city's peace.

Built on a foundation of lies, Gotham City enacted high-pressure and heavy-handed new laws, locking all criminals away in prison or thoroughly driving them out of the city...

The new story would begin eight years later. It seemed "Batman" and Jim Gordon had gotten the results they wanted, and the entire city had entered a highly orderly state; it truly looked like the "Dark Knight" was no longer needed. Audiences might assume that Bruce Wayne, the true identity of "Batman", had won this battle. Yet he was deeply tormented by everything that had happened, having completely lost himself, unsure of how to show his face as Batman again. So in the third film, what Duke essentially needed to do was handle the collateral fallout of past events, including for "Batman" himself and the other characters who had appeared.

As the final chapter of the Batman trilogy, Duke decided to tell a story that would not receive any further extensions. He had already submitted the script outline and character concepts for these contents to Warner Brothers as early as 2005, back when he was producing Batman Begins.

The film's boundaries would be tamer than The Dark Knight. As a super-blockbuster with a $250 million investment, the film inevitably had to be PG-13.

In essence, the Batman trilogy had never broken away from the family-friendly scope of PG-13, and it was precisely this PG-13 rating that guaranteed the films could sell tremendously well.

In Hollywood, for a film production to achieve sufficient market returns, it had to consider being commonly understood and accepted across different demographics and different media platforms. Within the diversified development platforms of family entertainment—theaters, television, home theaters, games, toys, or other forms of derivative products—PG and PG-13 films were the easiest to be accepted and achieve commercial success.

These types of films referred to those capable of covering audiences under the age of seventeen across all media platforms, films that could cross demographic and cultural barriers to attract a much broader audience base.

Virtually all superhero movies could essentially be classified into this category.

Shaping their stories and characters with mass appeal, spectacle, emotional arcs, and positive energy, and—driven by the need for commercial profit—pleasing as many viewers as possible while offending as few artsy audiences as possible, was the greatest characteristic of these films.

Although Hollywood family films could be traced back to the early sound era, their current dominance over the market was a phenomenon that only began in the late 1980s.

The central status of family films in the post-Hollywood era was often severely overlooked. Many defined family films as movies targeted at children and their parents, but that definition of family films was actually already outdated.

After the mid-1980s, these types of films were no longer merely pastime movies targeted at parents and children, but expanded their scope to the entire global media market, relying on mass appeal as much as possible to cross regional and cultural boundaries and reach a larger audience.

Family films were no longer confined to a single cinematic context. Most family films were collections of multimedia intellectual properties, and many were built upon pre-existing brands.

Examples included Warner Brothers' Harry Potter series, The Lord of the Rings series, the Superman series, and the Batman series.

The core brand images of these films had already been accepted by audiences and boasted established fanbases. They could be presented in various media formats such as films, television, computer games, comic books, and toys, allowing Hollywood family films to transcend the boundaries of cinema and reach far broader horizons.

In Hollywood, industry professionals—Duke included—all shared one consensus: he who wins the family market wins the world!

Examining the list of the top 100 most successful films at the global box office, over 95 percent were labeled or widely regarded as family films, and the majority of them were released in the late 1990s and beyond.

Additionally, these 100 films were all produced or distributed by the Big Six Hollywood studios—Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Sony Columbia, and Universal Pictures—which together formed the Motion Picture Association of America, or the MPAA.

Although these studios produced less than 30 percent of Hollywood's films each year, they commanded the vast majority of the global box office market and major film franchises. These MPAA member companies held a near-absolute dominance over the worldwide film distribution market.

The modern blockbusters from these major studios were clearly trending toward standardization in both format and target demographics. An increasing number of mainstream Hollywood films were being rated as "Parental Guidance Suggested" (PG) or "Parents Strongly Cautioned for Children Under 13" (PG-13), indicating that these films were steadily aiming at the global family market.

In stark contrast, restricted, R-rated films—once the mainstays of the studios, which children and teenagers could not watch without an accompanying parent—were steadily declining in both quantity and appeal.

As of now, not a single one of the top 30 highest-grossing films in the global market was R-rated.

Starting in the mid-1980s, a clear strategy by Hollywood studios to expand the family-film audience base was the creation of the PG-13 rating (Parents Strongly Cautioned, recommended for children over 13), which originated with the 1984 American film Indiana Jones.

PG-13 served as a buffer zone between the PG and R ratings, allowing children under 13 to watch with an accompanying adult. A PG or PG-13 rating had become a primary prerequisite for box office success, because the demographic capable of entering the theater was broad enough.

Although family films had evolved into a wide variety of forms, fantasy and sci-fi remained the most popular, with superhero films being the most typical example. No matter how the Batman trilogy changed, it could never escape the fact that it was a superhero film; and only the fantasy and sci-fi genres were truly capable of breaking out of North America and conquering the global market.

The various partnerships within the film industry and the integration of derivative markets directly influenced the subject matter of the films themselves.

The most obvious result was the wholesale surge in sci-fi and fantasy themes; after the turn of the millennium, such themes had become the primary components of major family blockbusters.

It was not without reason that these types of films became the mainstream of Hollywood.

First, the fantasy genre possessed a highly visualized sense of form that could satisfy international consumers' demand for visual spectacle.

Second, because the realms of these stories generally detached themselves from the realities of Earth, they avoided alienating non-Western audiences due to socio-cultural factors.

Third, and most importantly, a rich fictional world could provide limitless opportunities for movie merchandise and other commercial tie-ins. For example, through the Batman, Harry Potter, and The Lord of the Rings series, Warner Brothers used film to bring renowned narrative worlds with deep-rooted fanbases into reality; the film franchises, spin-off products, and cinematic styles built upon these foundations turned Warner into the pioneer of "world-building" after the millennium.

Audiences actively promoted these films through word of mouth, social networks, and fan clubs, and purchased related products, all of which vastly extended a work's lifespan. This kind of cross-media interaction sustained the development of films in the post-Hollywood era and provided the basis for the film industry's decision-making.

Without a doubt, The Dark Knight Rises would inevitably adhere to all of these principles.