Some research into the target audiences of different psychological thrillers. Created for my AS Media Studies project.

1. Jordan Mitchell

2. Black Swan Donnie Darko
Budget: $13,000,000 Budget: $4,500,000
Opening Weekend Takings: $1,443,809 Opening Weekend Takings: $110,494
Gross: $106,952,327 Gross: $727,883
Distributor: Fox Searchlight Pictures Distributor: Newmarket Films

3. Black Swan Donnie Darko
• Fox Searchlight Productions is a • Newmarket Films is an independent film
subsidiary of 20th Century Fox, one of distributor, meaning it would have less
the six major film distributors in the US. money to advertise the film.
Means it would have had lots of money • Many actors in this film are lesser known
put towards advertising etc. or this is their feature-film debut.
• Natalie Portman is a very famous, highly • Aimed at a teenage audience, which
regarded actress. This may have obviously reduces the films audience
encouraged fans of her previous work potential.
to see this film.
• Aimed more at a female audience. • The film features a plane crash and was
Market research shows that there are released shortly after 9/11, which may
more female cinema goers than male. have affected box office gross. The film
did go on to do much better on DVD sales
and become a cult hit.

4. Black Swan
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Previous Work:
Donnie Darko
• Pi Director: Richard Kelly
• Requiem For a Dream Previous Work:
• The Wrestler • No previous feature-film work.
Lots of previous experience with Donnie Darko is his only film to receive
psychological-thriller genre positive critical response.
(Pi, Requiem For A Dream to a lesser Average Metacritic Score: 54
extent).
Average Metacritic Score: 69

5. From looking at this research, I have discovered that
psychological thrillers tend not to do as well as other
films as they are typically quite confusing, which may
put the average cinema-goer of seeing the movie.
If we want to produce a successful movie, we will need
to get support from a large distribution company, such
as Fox Searchlight Pictures.
The audience we will want to aim for would be
adults, as our movie deals with issues and characters
that they would resonate with more than teenagers.