Case study

                                The ring

History/target audience

The director Gore Verbinski created this movie to portray the genre of a supernatural/horror film to the audience of pre-teens and adults(pg-13 rated). It is based off of the supernatural horror novel written by Koji Suzuki published in 1991. 

Production

The ring was produced by Walter F. Parkes. This film was produced by Blumhouse Productions which is mainly known for producing horror films. The ring(2002) had a budget of $48,000which was a large amount for a horror film. Provided that, this is the biggest budget Blumhouse Productions as given in the last 20 years which was 20 million from US(2019).

Distribution

The ring was distributed by DreamWorks Pictures. This film was theatrically released on October 18,2002 and was put onto multiple streaming services. Some of these streaming services consist of paramount plus, Hulu plus, iTunes, amazon instant video, google play, and Vudu. 

Marketing

In order for them to advertise the movie, they created many promotional websites that showed a preview of the character and the places of the film. After that physical VHS copies were distributed outside of the theaters by placing the tapes on windshields of peoples cars. This initial success came from DreamWorks which helped to increase the film into 700 additional theaters. The ring made $8.3million in its first two weeks in Japan and $6.6 millions total box office.

Cross-media convergence and synergy

This film has a introduction that brings interest to the audience when it says based on true events, this has many viewers wondering if the haunted videotape is actually real which helps to increase the sales price.