The Murder On the Orient Express (2017) is the sort of feel Sitara and I want for our title sequence. So, I thought it would be appropriate to do a case study following the path of the movie through its pre-production phase, the funding phase, the production phase, distribution, and exhibition. Doing this will allow me to see which studio would best fit our genre and film idea.
Beginning Stages
In December 2013, the project was announced as a remake from the original released in 1974. Michael Green wrote the adapted screenplay with three producers beside him, Ridley Scott, Mark Gordon and Simon Kinberg (Variety, 1). Joining the crew as a director, Kenneth Branagh also made the executive decision to star as the main detective, Hercule Poirot. The production companies involved were Kinberg Genre, The Mark Gordon Company, and Scott Free Productions.
The genre picked for the movie after writing the screenplay was mystery, crime, and drama. This was due to the mysterious elements and dramatic portrayals of each character through acting and different cinematographic elements. The target audience would most likely be among an older audience with the presumption that they saw or have heard of the 1974 version of the movie. Moviegoers with this background would most likely want to see how the movie changed from the four decades earlier or how the movie made the narrative of the original book that much better.
Production
The principal photography phase started in late 2016, November 20th (Daniels, 1). This continued until May of 2017, the year of the film’s release. On the set of the film, Branagh also brought on the grandson and great-grandson of the author, Christie, to help bring the story to a somewhat modern light without taking away its essential story.
The film had a pretty big budget to work with, having it be at 55 million. They set their shooting location in the UK on the train that goes from Paris to Istanbul. It wasn’t the real train, since that one has been decommissioned since the 1970s. They shot the movie on film with a 65mm camera. In doing this, it saved time and gave the movie the type of feel that they wanted. They faced a few challenges with the 65mm film, since the only place that could process it was Los Angelos, so the Executive Producer Jenkins ended up opening his own processing building in the UK.
After shooting everything for the few months, Audsley, the film’s editor, edited the film in a short amount of time so the producers could see it. This then led to the distribution and exhibition stages.
Distribution/Exhibition
The distribution company the film went with was 20th Century Fox. Our film most likely won’t go as big as Fox, but along the same lines. It was a wide release film across theaters as it wasn’t released in select theaters in the UK or Ireland, but wasn’t released everywhere else until a few weeks or months later. It grossed domestically $102,826,543 and $352,789,811 internationally. The movie made $10,000,000 the first day of release.
Sources
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3402236/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_on_the_Orient_Express_(2017_film)
As some people are mentioned, I liked their Wikipedia site to their name if clicked on.
Into The Truth 