As March wore on and the end of term approached, I was preparing a ‘taster’ teaching session for an upcoming post-applicant day. This is an open day for prospective university students who have already applied and been offered a place. The aim is to give them a flavour of what the teaching on the course will be like, and so staff like myself offer an hour long seminar. The timing of the taster day coincided with my preparing to present a two hour first year lecture on the Hollywood blockbuster, so I elected to use that as the topic of my taster session. The problem however was that the blockbuster lecture was for a Film Studies module, while the taster session was for prospective students in both film and TV, so pulling all these threads together I decided to get my prospective students to consider whether there is such a thing as a TV blockbuster.
I wasn’t sure if this would work, but then on 18 March the world premiere of season 5 of Game of Thrones was held at the Tower of London. Featuring holograms of dragons flying beside the Tower walls, a red carpet, a roster of stars, and the world’s media, this extravagant event was sponsored by, and aired on, Sky Atlantic, which has been home to Game of Thrones in the UK since the beginning. It is not the first time that a new series of Game of Thrones got the red carpet treatment. Season four premiered at the Lincoln Centre in New York, while season three was launched in true Hollywood style at TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. But the Tower of London launch was undoubtedly the biggest and most lavish, quite openly marking GoT as true international blockbuster.
But is it weird to talk of a TV show being a blockbuster? The blockbuster is a traditionally cinematic, and entirely slippery concept, existing in a kind of liminal space somewhere between genre and industry, and between expectations and results. All of my students were completely secure in identifying Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) as a blockbuster for example, even though it hasn’t even been released yet, whereas the already proven financial success 50 Shades of Grey (2015) was greeted with uncertainty. Pressing them as to why, it was clear that they felt Ultron was a blockbuster for several key reasons. First, it is a sequel to a film, and part of a franchise that has already proven itself to be an extraordinary financial success. The expectation therefore is that the new film in the series will have a similar impact on the box office, the promise of huge returns making it a clear blockbuster. Linked to this they identified the fact that Ultron is a pre-sold property, not only through the various incarnations of the cinematic Marvel Universe but also from the original comic books and, paratextually, from the seemingly all-pervading superhero genre that is scheduled to dominate screens for at least the next couple of years. It is also worth noting here that while Avengers: Age of Ultronwas a shoo-in for blockbuster status on these specific grounds, the same could not be said for the closely related Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D (2014-), not just because the response to it and the viewing figures have been relatively lukewarm, but also because it was TV. The third aspect they discussed was the marketing campaign, driven through social media by the release first of teaser trailers followed by several further trailer iterations, all circulated online by avid fans. In this respect, I argued, 50 Shades of Grey has similar blockbuster tendencies, pre-sold by being based on a very successful book, and furthermore trailed well in advance to build up maximum expectation. Furthermore, Sheldon Hall has defined the blockbuster film as being one that is either extraordinarily financially successful or at least has the need to be that successful in order to return a profit, (2002,p. 11) so by Hall’s definition 50 Shades, given it is the most successful 18 certificate film in UK box office history, falls unequivocally into the blockbuster category. Of course part of its success was the fact that the film was released on Valentine’s Day, and dominated UK cinemas on its opening weekend, showing in some multiplexes every 20 minutes from morning to midnight.
A pre-sold property, a carefully planned and executed marketing campaign, hype and a saturation release have all been an essential part of the blockbuster film since the mid-1970s and the release of Jaws (1975). Marketing and the fact of being pre-sold was also an essential characteristic of the blockbuster in the 1950s, with for example Ben Hur (1959) and The Ten Commandments (1956) being based on the two biggest selling books in history at that time, Lew Wallace’s epic tale and the Bible respectively. The difference in the 1950s was that a blockbuster was not to be seen on every screen in America on opening day. Films like these, with their magnetic stereo sound and widescreen format were more likely to be roadshown, run in limited city centre theatres as special presentations, often with overtures and intermissions, with higher than average ticket prices. These special presentations could last for months until the film, shorn of its stereo sound and overtures, went out to do the rounds of the provinces.
So a splashy premiere, a long lead in time for the marketing campaign and a pre-sold property that is a proven hit clearly tie Game of Thrones into the realm of the blockbuster as cinematically defined. So too does the way in which we see it. Putting aside that it remains the most pirated TV show on the internet, people willing to pay to see it must, like those who wished to be first in line to watch Charlton Heston part the Red Sea with a bouffant shampoo and set, pay a premium for the privilege. Either they must subscribe to HBO in the US, or Sky in the UK, or they must buy a Now TV Box and take out a monthly subscription in order to stream the show on their screens. For those in the UK not willing to pay Sky, nor to download illegally, Game of Thrones has an unusually long road to DVD and Blu-Ray release, coming out almost ten months after the broadcast is done, and unlike the good old days in the 1990s when the likes of Buffy and The X-Files would run on terrestrial channels a year after their run on Sky, there’s no sign of Game of Thrones turning up on Channel Five any time soon.
There are other links between GoT and blockbuster theory of course. Steve Neale (2003, p. 48) argues that one essential aspect of the blockbuster is scale, but scale can in this context mean many different things. Largeness of scale can relate to an extended running time, to a large cast either in relation to the number of named parts and/or the number of extras, the scope of the story and presentation of the subject being depicted, and finally of course budget. Large scale equals a high cost. The above is certainly true in relation to GoT. The story is epic, comprising seven confirmed books, only the first three of which make up the four seasons of the show so far. The cast is also large, with the first season alone having 90 named speaking roles and requiring the assembling of the largest cast ever for a debut season of an HBO series. The scale of the production also ties into this concept of size; the show boasting substantial production values in terms of the mise en scene and a shoot taking place in several countries, while intimate dialogue sequences are interspersed with moments of lavish spectacle, such as the epic battle for King’s Landing at the end of season two.
All of which leads me, via a very circuitous route, to think about a Cult show that is about to return to our screens. The X-Files, along with another returnee Twin Peaks, is at its heart the very definition of a cult TV show, and while its impeding rebirth has been met with ecstatic joy by its legion of fans, what we start to see perhaps is the beginning not of the return of a cult show, but of the transformation of a cult into a blockbuster. While The X-Files will most likely not focus on a large cast or lavish spectacle, and so is very likely to be far smaller in scope than GoT, what it does have in common with the HBO show is hype, and a sense of breathless anticipation. As I’ve argued elsewhere, The X-Files at its peak was one of the most successful shows on television, attracting audiences of over 20 million viewers. By the time of its final episode however the majority had tuned out, to the extent that even die-hard fans weren’t particularly sorry to see it go. When the final episode aired in the UK, it did not make the top 50 most watched shows that week, while in the US the finale garnered the worst Neilsen ratings of any X-Files finale since the end of the second season. (Brown, 2013, p. 9). Yet in interviews about the return, creator Chris Carter and actor David Duchovny have made a couple of very interesting comments. Carter has referred gap between 2002 and 2015 as ‘a thirteen year commercial break’, while Duchovny has stressed that ‘we’re still trying to do the same show. It’s not like we’re trying to make it 2.0, or whatever the .0 is now, 3.0. We’re gonna make the same show’. They’ve also announced that the six episodes will include both the mythology and monster of the week episodes. In other words, despite there being rumours that the season 8 and 9 stand-in cast members Robert Patrick and Annabeth Gish have also been approached to revive their roles as John Doggett and Monica Reyes, both Carter and Duchovny are signalling a return of The X-Files in its original format, with its two main leads in place and doubtless a colonisation narrative interspersed with a series of investigations of the weird and the wondrous. The aim is clearly to bring the series back as it was at its most successful, to recreate the 20 million viewer version of The X-Files, not the measly 9 million viewer version. Already heralded by TVWise as likely to be the ‘hottest US scripted drama on the international marketplace for the year ahead’, The X-Files is shaping up not to return simply as a cult show, but rather it has all the hallmarks of a TV blockbuster.
Time will tell if this hype and anticipation translates into a glitzy premiere or even something like the kind of simultaneous cinema showing that proved to be so successful for Doctor Who with both the 50th anniversary special and the first episode featuring Peter Capaldi, Deep Breath. In the UK the latter fared nowhere near as well as the former, grossing £500,000 to The Day of the Doctors’ £1.8million, but it was number one at the US box office for the Monday night that it screened. Not only was Capaldi’s debut screened in cinemas, but also he and Jenna Coleman preceded the premiere with a 12 day world tour, staging talks and red carpet events in Cardiff, London, Seoul, Sydney, New York, Mexico City and Rio. So if the return of The X-Files really wants to be ‘event’ TV, it is becoming all the more likely that it will have to do more than just get shown on Fox, because the TV landscape is moving towards a situation where ‘event’ TV is no longer sufficient as a form of product differentiation.
In 2009 Stacey Abbott analysed Lost (2004-2010) as an example of a ‘Cult Blockbuster’. In her piece, she draws out the cult elements of the show, notably those revolving around the figure of Locke. In the first instance there is the casting of Terry O’Quinn, himself a cult figure through appearances on Abrams’ preceding show Alias (2001-2006), but far more importantly through his starring role in the horror feature film The Stepfather (1987). As Abbott points out, it is also around Locke that arguably the most ‘cult’ aspect of the show, the mystery behind the island, begins to coalesce, since it is Locke who first sees the mysterious ‘smokezilla’ and also is the one who appears to be the most affected by the island itself, it having given him back the ability to walk. At the same time Abbott also discusses the blockbuster aspects including the unusually high cost of the pilot at $10m, and the innovative marketing campaign, which saw Calvin Klein-inspired adverts being shown in cinemas – one of the first TV shows to target cinemagoing audiences – alongside placing posters for and clips of the series in an online game, Anarchy. In addition the first screening of the pilot took place at Comic-Con in July, some three months before the series finally aired to the public on ABC in September 2004. (2009, pp 13-16).
All of these elements signalled Lost as something more than event TV, something out of the ordinary, a unique product. A blockbuster. Eleven years on a screening at Comic-Con and a well publicised season premiere on network or cable is not only no longer enough to achieve blockbuster status, it’s barely enough to qualify as event TV. With ITV regularly trailing their new drama series in cinemas, the kind of promotion campaign that Lost adopted is the minimum that many shows in the quality or cult arena have to do just to be noticed at all, let alone to stand out from the crowd. Now cinema screenings, high profile red carpet launch events and world tours appear to be the new way of distinguishing a series; not just from the everyday TV product, but now from the run of ‘ordinary’ ‘event’ TV shows. The TV blockbuster has arrived, and whether The X-Files, or indeed Twin Peaksadopt blockbuster strategies will be just one of the many things about these revivals to look forward to in 2016. Either way, with the examples of Game of Thrones and Doctor Who already out there, the time has arrived to start thinking about redefining ‘event’ TV in the light of a new blockbuster TV paradigm.
Simon Brown is Director of Studies for Film, TV and Media and Cultural Studies at Kingston University. His main research areas are early cinema, British cinema and contemporary American television, and he has published pieces on shows as diverse as Dexter, Alias, Supernatural and The X-Files.
