Institutional Research

The thriller genre has many different subgenres stemming from it. Surprisingly, there aren’t that many movies that are thrillers. Below is a table from boxoficemojo.com that also contains the top grossing film from each genre that is very high on each sub genre. For example, there are 59 movies in the serial killer sub genre of thriller and the highest grossing filming this genre is Hannibal that is $165.1 million gross.

Top Grossing Films - Thriller

Ticket Sales and Market Share by Year - Thriller

This table shows that thriller films were not very popular in 1995,1996, 2005 and 2003. On the other hand, there was a rise in the amount of tickets sold from then on. The market share and the tickets sold was the highest in 2012 that was almost 2000,000,000 tickets sold and 150,000,000 in market shares that may mean that there was either a high number of thrillers that year or some big thrillers such as Shutter Island or Bourne Ultimatum came out that year.

House at the end of the street

The genre of this film is thriller, Elissa (Jennifer Lawrence) and her mother (Elisabeth Shue) move to a small town and find that they are neighbours to a house where a young girl supposedly killed her parents. The locals said that the girl dissapered and no one has seen her since the incident but Elissa becomes close lovers to the girl’s brother (Max Thieriot) and she then learns that the sinister story of murder is far from over as she knows that there is a secret kept between the walls of the house.

Sub Genres of Thriller

Action ThrillerConspiracy Thriller

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Crime Thriller

Disaster Thriller

Eco-Thriller

Forensic Thriller

Legal Thriller

Medical Thriller

There are more such as; Mystery Thriller, Political Thriller, Psychological Thriller, Religious Thriller, Romantic Thriller, Spy Thriller, Supernatural Thriller and Techno Thriller.

Thriller Distributers

There are lots of distribution companies that distribute thriller films. If a thriller film is distributed by on of ‘The Big Six’ then a larger company is more likely to distribute the film compared to and independent film company.

Universal studios were founded in 1912 and are one of the oldest film studios in the world. Universal studios have released many different and popular thriller films such as; ‘The Strangers’, ‘Drag Me To Hell’, ‘The Last House On The Left’, ‘Unborn’ and ‘Stay Alive’.

Summit Entertainment is another studio that has been known to release popular, well known films. Film producers Bernd Eichinger, Arnon Milchan and Andrew G Vajna founded Summit Entertainment in 1993. Summit Entertainment was originally created to handle film sales in foreign countries but then expanded and began producing great, unforgettable films in 1995 just 2 years after the studio was founded. Some big thrillers which have been produced by summit entertainment such as; ‘Sorority Row’, ‘Hurt Locker’ and ‘ Ghost Rider’.

One of the large film distributers is Momentum Pictures. Momentum Pictures is one of the leading independent motion picture distributors in the UK and releases on average 20 theoretical films a year, with several digital television releases. Momentum pictures have many successful theoretic releases which include the Oscar, BAFTA and BIFA winning movies such as; The Kings Speech, Amelie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Lost in Transaction, Control, Downfall, The Young Victoria, Law Abiding Citizen and many more.

Most Successful Thriller

The Dark Knight Rises – Directed by Christopher Nolan this is one of the most successful movies in the world. This was produced by different companies that made this film so successful as they have a massive budget. The production companies involved were; Warner Bros Pictures, DC Entertainment, Legendary Pictures and Syncopy this means that they had a huge budget and a great movie as there were many different aspects of the movie which were specified by each production company to make the film perfect and portrayed ‘Batman’ as they wanted. The estimated budget was $45,000,000 and the opening weekend made more money than it cost to make which was $49,500,000 and the gross worldwide was $283,800,000.