Target Audience: Genre Success Research

Aswell as the questionnaire, it was important to research how popular my chosen genre choice was with the general public in terms of in the cinema. For this I used the uk film council website and its 2009 statistical yearbook.

Here I found a breakdown of the popularity of genres in relation to the money made from films released in 2008.

The genre of thriller appeared to not be as popular as I'd thought, with only 28 releases compared to Comedy's 140, and earnt only 21.2 million in gross box office in comparison to comedy's 222.4. But from my Questionnaires I knew that people did enjoy thrillers, so i researched further.

This table however, appeared to show a different story. Based on the amount of money made from the films in the first weekend at the cinema as well as the box office gross, the top two films of 2008 were Quantum of Solace and The Dark Knight, both of which in the thriller genre.




Aswell as in cinemas, the thriller genre appeared to make money in DVD sales. In 2008, 8.5% of DVD sales were of the thriller genre, ranking fourth out of 12 genres in the UK.

From my own research as well as that produced from my own questionnaire, I found that Thriller is indeed a popular genre, with a wide range of interesting sub-genres. The idea of suspense will be interesting to create and therefore my own research has backed up the decision to create my own film opening in the style of a thriller.