Working title Research

Working Title Films is a British film production company, based in London, UK. The company was founded by Tim Bevan and Sarah Radclyffe in 1983. It produces feature films and several television productions. Eric Fellner and Bevan are now the co-owners of the company.

Although contractually allowed to produce any film with a budget of up to $25 million, on a practical basis, Bevan and Fellner consult with studio executive at Working Title's parent company NBC Universal.[2] Working Title is located in Oxford Street, London, and is known for having a limited number of employees. The company also has other offices located in Los Angeles, and Ireland.

In 1991, Working Title was involved in a bid for the London weekend ITV licence. Working Title, Mentorn, Palace and PolyGram wanted to take over from London Weekend Television and broadcast to London under the name London Independent Broadcasting. In the event LWT retained its licence; London Independent Broadcasting's proposals were deemed by the Independent Television Commission, which was overseeing the bid process, to fail the quality threshold.

The London office will be overseen by WTTV's head of television (UK) Juliette Howell, who has worked as an executive producer in the BBC drama commissioning group and as drama commissioner and head of development for Film4, where her credits included Slumdog Millionaire and Shameless.

Universal Research

Universal was founded by Carl Laemmle, a German-Jewish immigrant from Laupheim who settled in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where he managed a clothing store. On a buying trip in 1905 to Chicago, he was struck by the popularity of nickelodeons. One story has Laemmle watching a box office for hours, counting patrons and calculating the day's take. Within weeks of his Chicago trip, Laemmle gave up dry goods to buy the first of several nickelodeons. For Laemmle and other such entrepreneurs, the creation in 1908 of the Edison-backed Motion Picture Trust meant that exhibitors were expected to pay fees for Trust-produced films they showed. Based on Edison's patent for the electric motor used in cameras and projectors, along with other patents, the Trust collected fees on all aspects of movie production and exhibition, and attempted to enforce a monopoly on distribution. It was believed that the productions were meant to be used for another company but the firm turned Universal down.

In 1945, the British entrepreneur J. Arthur Rank, hoping to expand his American presence, bought into a four-way merger with Universal, the independent company International Pictures, and producer Kenneth Young. The new combine, United World Pictures, was a failure and was dissolved within one year. Rank and International remained interested in Universal, however, culminating in the studio's reorganization as Universal-International. William Goetz, a founder of International, was made head of production at the renamed Universal-International Pictures Inc., which also served as an import-export subsidiary, and copyright holder for the production arm's films. Goetz, a son-in-law of Louis B. Mayer decided to bring "prestige" to the new company. He stopped the studio's low-budget production of B movies (films under 65 minutes) and curtailed Universal's famous "monster" and "Arabian Nights" series. Distribution and copyright control remained under the name of Universal Pictures Company Inc.

Universal was Founded in 1912 by Carl Laemmle, it is one of the oldest American movie studios still in continuous production. On May 11, 2004, the controlling stake in the company was sold by Vivendi Universal to General Electric, parent of NBC.

In 1928, Laemmle, Sr. made his son, Carl, Jr. head of Universal Pictures as a 21st birthday present. Universal already had a reputation for nepotism at one time, 70 of Carl, Sr.'s relatives were supposedly on the payroll. Many of them were nephews, resulting in Carl, Sr. being known around the studios as "Uncle Carl." Ogden Nash famously quipped in rhyme, "Uncle Carl Laemmle/Has a very large faemmle." Among these relatives was future Academy Award winning director/producer William Wyler.

Burdened with debt, in 2004 Vivendi Universal sold 80% of Vivendi Universal Entertainment (including the studio and theme parks) to General Electric, parent of NBC. The resulting media super-conglomerate was renamed NBC Universal, while Universal Studios Inc. remained the name of the production subsidiary. Though some expressed doubts that regimented, profit-minded GE and high-living Hollywood could coexist, as of 2007 the combination has worked. The reorganized "Universal" film conglomerate has enjoyed several financially successful years. As presently structured, GE owns 80% of NBC Universal; Vivendi holds the remaining 20%, with an option to sell its share in 2006.

Slumdog Millionaire Write up - (Case Study)

Genre: Drama, Romance


Target Audience: The target audience was aimed to be mainly a Indian audience but ended up being a mainstream film directed towards all audiences.


Director: Danny Boyle, Loveleen Tandan (co-director: Indian)


Budget:
$15 million (£9,476,472.01) and grossing over $360 million (£227,431,595.12) worldwide have become a very successful film.


Music:
Composer A.R. Rahman on the Sounds of ‘Slumdog Millionaire’


Scriptwriter:
Mumbai, Oct 18 (IANS) British writer Simon Beaufoy, who spent considerable time here to pen the script of “Slumdog Millionaire”, says the experience has changed his life.”It was incredibly rewarding for me. I’ve been writing for 12 years. I’ve been brought up on a British tradition of screenwriting. In India, I found that to be a completely inappropriate way of writing. Now after writing ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, I can’t go back to writing the way I used to,” Beaufoy told IANS.


Casting:


Dev Patel - Jamel K. Malik (Lead Role)

 Saurabh Shukla - Sergeant Srinivas

Anil Kapoor - Prem Kapur

Rajendranath Zutshi - Director (as Raj Zutshi)

Jeneva Talwar - Vision Mixer

Freida Pinto - Latika

Irrfan Khan - Police Inspector

Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail - Youngest Salim

Ayush Mahesh Khedekar - Youngest Jamal

Jira Banjara - Airport Security Guard (as Hira Banjara)

Sheikh Wali - Airport Security Guard

Mahesh Manjrekar - Javed

Sanchita Choudhary - Jamal's Mother



Sharib Hashmi - Prakash

Slumdog Millionaire Interview (Dev Patel)

I Am Legend - Write up (Case Study)

I Am Legend is a 2007 film directed by Francis Lawrence and starring Will Smith. It is the third feature film adaptation of Richard Matheson's 1954 novel of the same name, following 1964's The Last Man on Earth and 1971's The Omega Man. Smith plays virologist Robert Neville, who is immune to a vicious man-made virus originally created to cure cancer. He works to create a remedy while living in Manhattan in 2012, a city inhabited by violent victims of the virus. The film's plot is an example of a "Last Man on Earth" story.
Warner Bros. began developing I Am Legend in 1994, and various actors and directors were attached to the project, though production was delayed due to budgetary concerns related to the script. Production began in 2006 in New York City, filming mainly on location in the city, including a $5 million scene at the Brooklyn Bridge, the most expensive scene ever filmed in the city at the time.
I Am Legend was released on December 14, 2007, in the United States, and opened to the largest ever box office (not counting for inflation) for a non-Christmas film released in the U.S. in December. The film was the seventh highest grossing film of 2007, earning $276 million domestically and $329 million internationally, for a total of $585 million.
The late 1990s brought a reemergence of the science fiction horror genre. In 1995, Warner Bros. began developing the film project, having owned the rights to Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend since 1970 and The Omega Man. Mark Protosevich was hired to write the script after the studio was impressed with his spec script of The Cell. Protosevich's first draft took place in the year 2000 in San Francisco, California, and contained many similarities with the finished film, though the Darkseekers (Called 'Hemocytes') were civilized to the point of the creatures in The Omega Man and Anna was a lone morphine addict; as well as the fact that there was a Hemocyte character named Christopher who joined forces with Neville. Warner Bros. immediately put the film on the fast track, attaching Neal H. Moritz as producer.
Actors Tom Cruise, Michael Douglas, and Mel Gibson had been considered to star in the film, using a script by Protosevich and with Ridley Scott as director; however, by June 1997 the studio's preference was for actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. In July, Scott and Schwarzenegger finalized negotiations, with production slated to begin the coming September, using Houston as a stand-in for the film's setting of Los Angeles. Scott had Protosevich replaced by a screenwriter of his own choosing, John Logan, with whom he spent months of intensive work on a number of different drafts. The Scott/Logan version of I Am Legend was a bold, artistic mash of scifi action and psychological thriller, without dialogue in the first hour and with a sombre ending. The creatures in Logan's Legend were similar to the Darkseekers of the finished film in their animalistic, barbaric nature. The studio, fearing its lack of commercial appeal and merchandising potential, began to worry about the liberties they had given Scott - then on a negative streak of box office disappointments - and urged the production team to reconsider the lack of action in the screenplay. After an "esoteric" draft by writer Neal Jimenez, Warner Bros. reassigned Protosevich to the project, reluctantly working with Scott again.

'I Am Legend' Interview (Will Smith)