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Why Has The Inbetweeners Movie Been So Successful?

To really appreciate just how monumental the opening for The Inbetweeners Movie has been, try overly emphasising the last three words of the next few sentences in a disgruntled Kanye West tone. For instance: The highest grossing UK comedy opening 'Of All Time'! The biggest TV spin-off in the UK 'Of All Time'! It took in more cash in its opening weekend in the UK than Avatar. As everyone knows that motherfucker is the biggest movie, say it with me, 'Of All Time!'

As industry experts and film fans pick their jaws from off the floor with one hand and grab the scalpels to dissect every inch of the 'sleeper' hit with the other, we're gonna offer some theories of our own. Of course whatever conclusion we come to, we and they will be completely wrong. After all, this is the industry where everybody knows: 'Nobody Knows Anything'.

He that first spaketh the famous phrase 'Nobody Knows Anything' was Oscar-winning screenwriter William Goldman. In his book, The Big Picture – a tome that dictates if anybody does know anything about the film business that person may well be Goldman – the writer of Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid talks of a phrase he hates: “non-recurring phenomenon”. The Inbetweeners Movie falls into this category.

Goldman believed if you ask any studio why a film that wasn't expected to do well (e.g. not a franchise movie, not a star-vehicle), did do well, they'll reply, “it's a non-recurring phenomenon”. No need to explain it. No rhyme or reason to it. Like the England riots and the popularity of James Corden (hey buddy!) some things just can't be explained. They'll whistle a happy tune and go about greenlighting the next Green Lantern.

But let's forget that 'Nobody Knows Anything' and let's at least try to gain some knowledge. For the first word as to why we're looking at the equivalent of a Twilight haul on a Ken Loach budget, let's ask the writers. Goldman would like that. They reckon it's all to do with "the four greatest comic actors of their generation"...

Cast
Bollocks. Ask the man on the street, who Will, Jay, Simon and Neil are and you may well get a response in the affirmative. Ask them who Simon Bird, James Buckley, Blake Harrison and Joe Thomas are and you're likely to get results ranging from “that dead musician” to “the left back for QPR?”. These guys are not stars. They will not open other films. Hopefully they'll go on to have decent careers, they seem like genuinely nice boys. But they are not, repeat not, stars. Nobody said “let's hit the cinema this weekend and watch the new Blake Harrison film”. I'd hazard a guess, no one ever will.

Built-in audience
So then it's simple. It has a built in audience. Fans of the show means fans going to the cinema. But then Glee also has a built-in audience. Glee has a following on E4 of about half that of The Inbetweeners. Singing teens equals 1.1 million viewers. Wanking teens equals 2.2 million. Ergo, vis a vis, concordantly, Glee's opening weekend will be half ofThe Inbetweeners haul of £13,196,422 or at least there or there abouts. But Gleeactually took £356,271. Anybody out there recently got an A-Level in Maths and fancies working out if that is half? Or even there or thereabouts.

Demographic
Teenagers, when they're not smashing up JD Sports and nicking trainers/offering to clean up the mess of PEOPLE OF ALL AGES smashing up JD Sports and nicking trainers (delete depending on age and newspaper choice), have a lot of cash. Well they don't -or at least me and my friends never did when I was the age to be wanking into a sock - but they also don't have bills. What they do have is, a phrase to make money men semi-erect, “expendable income”. A movie aimed at teenagers during the school holidays, opening on an Orange Wednesday. On the week of A-Level results when parents are rewarding their children financially. Now that's good forethought.

Marketing
Not being an avid Hollyoaks fan I'm unaware of the advert coverage The Inbetweeners is getting during the Channel 4 soap. I'd guess a fair bit. I'd also guess it's about an eighth of what Harry Potter acquired. The poster was awful. The trailer was adequate. The social network coverage was pretty good. Most websites had at least some interviews or clips. FilmFour giving over their Twitter account to the four boys was a great piece of low budget marketing that seemed to work well, but no amount of press could account for £13million plus. But then there's the reviews...

Quality
Surely a film reaps what it sows in terms of quality? Right? The reason The Inbetweeners Movie has done so well is because it's a good film. It's a well structured comedy with heart that, one 'insanely good-looking and sexy' reviewer said, “works for the uninitiated” (note the “may help its box office” statement too, I am available to film studios for consultancy work). So quality equals success. By that rational we can all popTransformers: Dark Of The Moon in our Best Films of 2011 lists. Also Fight Club, Citizen Kane, 'It's A Wonderful Life' and Children of Men were all rubbish and should never be spoken of again. Even sarcastically that was hard to write.

So there we are. Lesson learned. Make a decent movie for teenagers starring the “greatest comic actors of their generation”, release it during the holidays and watch the money roll in. Easy really.

Oh and The Inbetweeners Movie 2. I'd bet approximately £13,196,422 on it.

By Owen Nicholls

The Inbetweeners Movie: Additional Information

Phones4U gave away The Inbetweeners box sets with the Samgsung Galaxy Ace, which not only promoted the show but created hype surrounding the new film.

"Filmology were instrumental in developing the relationship with the film's UK distributors, not only delivering the DVDs and procuring the rights to use the film's images, but providing a holiday competition prize to Crete, too." - Sally Dawson, BIG Group

The primary audience were generally those which enjoyed the TV show, mostly 15-25 in age to signify those approaching sixth form and those who just left university.
The release date of the summer holidays allowed many of which to go and see the film at the cinema, and if not, the DVD was released around Christmas anyway and so most would have purchased that.

The Inbetweeners Movie: Who was involved?

Details

Release Date: 17 August 2011 

Type of film: Features

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 97 mins

Country: UK

Director: Ben Palmer

Producer: Christopher Young

Executive Producers: Damon Beesley, Iain Morris

Editors: Charlie Fawcett, William Webb

Screenwriters: Damon Beesley, Iain Morris

Music: Oliver Whelan

Cinematograhpy: Jon Tester

Editing: William Webb, Charlie Fawcett

Director of Photography: Ben Wheeler

Production Designer: Dick Lunn

Principal Cast: Simon Bird, James Buckley, Blake Harrison, Joe Thomas

 

Production Studios

Bwark Productions:
Bwark Productions is a London based comedy producer founded in 2004 by two former Channel 4 commissioning editors – Iain Morris and Damon Beesley. Bwark is best known in the UK for its hit E4 comedy series The Inbetweeners. The third series drew a record audience in October 2010 (both for E4 and 4OD) and The Inbetweeners movie premiered in the UK in August 2012 before going on UK and international release. Bwark has also enjoyed success with television series Free Agents (Channel Four), Angelo’s (Five), and The Persuasionists (BBC2). Zodiak acquired Bwark in July 2011, making it the first acquisition since the formation of Zodiak Media. The Managing Director is Mark Lesbirel.

Young Films:
Chistopher Young (born April 28, 1958) is an American music composer for both film and television.
Many of his music compositions are for horror films, including Hellraiser, Tales from the Hood, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, Urban Legend, and Drag Me to Hell. Other works include Lucky You and Spider-Man 3, for which he received the Film & TV Music Award for Best Score for a Dramatic Feature Film. He also made three cameo appearances in Spider-Man 3.
Young was honored with the prestigious Richard Kirk award at the 2008 BMI Film and TV Awards. The award is given annually to a composer who has made significant contributions to film and television music.

Film4 Productions:
Film4 Productions is a British film production company owned by Channel Four Television Corporation. The company has been responsible for backing a large number of films made in the United Kingdom. The company's first production was Walter, directed by Stephen Frears, which was released in 1982.

Distribution

Entertainment Film Distributors is a British distributor of independent films in the UK and Ireland for various production companies, currently run by Nigel Green.
Michael L. Green, Nigel's father, was a veteran producer/distributor involved in the film industry since the 1930s when he was a teenager. In 1972 he formed Variety the prolific film distributor. In 1978 Green closed Variety and with his two sons Nigel and Trevor formed Entertainment Film Distributors, (and later its video arm Entertainment in Video), which handled the likes of The Lord of the Rings and was one of the leading forces in UK distribution. Michael L. Green died on June 17, 2003 aged 84.^[1]
Their first big success was Teen Wolf (1985) starring Michael J. Fox. Entertainment also released films for Empire Pictures and New World Pictures.
Most notably, between 1990 and 2010, Entertainment distributed films made by New Line Cinema along with films from other independent production companies. One of the most notable series of films distributed to date is The Lord of the Rings trilogy. In 2010, distribution rights for New Line Cinema films in the UK and Ireland were folded into New Lines parent company Warner Bros. Entertainment have released many BAFTA and Oscar winning films including The Departed, Million Dollar Baby, Gosford Park, Brokeback Mountain and The Artist.
Entertainment Film Distubutors is UK's leading independent film distibutor; and whilst they had the rights to the film for cinema exhibition, Channel 4 retained the rights for sales on the DVD market.

Why did The Inbetweeners Movie succeed?

The Inbetweeners: 'Our movie's success doesn't make any logical sense'

Blake Harrison, Joe Thomas, James Buckley and Simon Bird on the year they made the most successful British comedy movie in history

• Tom Lamont
• The Observer, Sunday 18 December 2011

 

The Inbetweeners cast: from left, Blake Harrison, James Buckley, Simon Bird and Joe Thomas. Photograph: Phil Fisk for the Observer

In an early scene of The Inbetweeners Movie, released in August, audiences met a central character wearing boxer shorts and scuba-diving equipment, noisily pleasuring himself into an open packet of wafer-thin ham. There followed 90 minutes of similarly vulgar surprises (intercourse with the elderly, the nasal ingestion of poo), but the film's biggest shock, its most convention-rattling stunner, was saved until last. Within a month of release, The Inbetweeners Movie – a feature-length spin-off of a sitcom broadcast on E4 from 2008 to 2010 – had become the most successful British comedy in cinema history.

"Hard to compute," says Blake Harrison, one of the film's four stars. "Surreal," says Joe Thomas. "If you thought about it too deeply you'd drive yourself mental," says James Buckley. "It certainly doesn't make any logical sense," says Simon Bird.

And it doesn't, because their film was released on the same day as Hollywood blockbuster Cowboys & Aliens, starring proven money-maker Daniel Craig. A week later, the adaptation of David Nicholls's mega-selling novel One Day was due out. A Justin Timberlake vehicle, Friends With Benefits, hovered, as did new versions of Jane Eyre, Conan the Barbarian and The Smurfs…
The Inbetweeners should have been swamped by Hollywood mulch; instead, it spent four mind-blowingly lucrative weeks at the top of the summer charts. It out-earned Cowboys & Aliens nearly 8:1 in its opening weekend, taking £13m. A further £13m came in from the US box office, and to date, without accounting for inevitably chunky sales of the new DVD, the film has pulled in more than £45m. How did this happen?
"The show's writers [and creators, Iain Morris and Damon Beesley] must have suspected that there was a market for a British take on an American Pie, a Superbad," says Bird. "And they were right. Probably beyond their wildest dreams." Buckley agrees. "There was room for a young-British-lads film, and maybe we were the guys to do it."
Thomas wonders if the giant numbers the film registered might have been down to fans of the TV show – which was pulling in more than 3m viewers by the time its third series finished last year – going along to the cinema, each dragging several friends. Harrison thinks there was simply something "quintessentially British" about the film's depiction of a hopeless Mediterranean holiday, all sunburn and disappointment and failures to pull, that tapped in to domestic sympathies. Anyway, the thing was a triumph, and the question of a sequel looms.
"No one's asked me," says Buckley. "We haven't had one conversation about it," says Bird. "I think there will definitely be interested parties who will want to do it," says Thomas. "If we're being completely honest, the distributors will want to do more," says Harrison, "because it's money in the bank. Because they know, now, that we've got an audience for it." Thomas: "I love working with the rest of the cast and would always want to do something more." Bird: "I wouldn't rule it out. We'll wait and see."
Everyone agrees that if they're going to do it "the story has to be right". In other words: ready the wafer-thin ham.

The Inbetweeners Movie: About The Film

Summary

The Inbetweeners Movie is a 2011 British coming-of-age comedy film based on the E4 sitcom The Inbetweeners, written by series creators Damon Beesley and Iain Morris and directed by Ben Palmer. The film follows the misadventures of a group of teenage friends on holiday in Crete after the end of their final year at school together, and currently serves as an ending to the TV series. It stars Simon Bird, Joe Thomas, James Buckley and Blake Harrison. The film was released on 19 August 2011 in the UK and Republic of Ireland.

Box Office

On its first day of release, The Inbetweeners Movie grossed over £2.5 million in 409 cinemas, outperforming Cowboys & Aliens. The film then went on to set a new record for the most successful opening weekend ever achieved by a comedy film in the UK, overtaking Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and The Hangover Part II after earning £13,200,000. It retained its number 1 position in the UK film charts for 4 weeks and for 3 weeks in the Republic of Ireland, finally being overtaken by Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy on 16 September 2011. The film saw a limited theatrical releases in the United States on 7 September 2012 where it grossed $36,000, making its total box office revenue $88,025,781.

Home Media

On 12 December 2011, The Inbetweeners Movie was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc in the UK by 4DVD, with the latter version sold as a triple pack containing both formats along with a digital copy of the film. Both versions include a number of special features, such as a making-of documentary, footage from the film's London premiere, various deleted scenes, cast commentaries and a blooper reel. The Blu-ray Disc release also features an extended cut of the film that restores approximately four minutes of material omitted from the theatrical release, most notably an additional scene in which Will and Simon encounter a drunken Mr. Gilbert on a Malia stag weekend. These additions resulted in the extended cut being rated an 18, as opposed to the 15 rating of the theatrical release.
Following its appearance in UK stores, the DVD quickly became a major financial success. Within less than a week, the film became the third fastest-selling British home media release of 2011 after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, with approximately 575,000 copies sold in the first day of its release. By December 17, estimated sales reached one million, resulting in the film displacing the home media release of Paul as one of the five best-selling DVDs of the year in the UK.

Critical Reception

The Inbetweeners Movie received mostly positive reviews upon UK release in August 2011. However, following release in the US in September 2012 critical reaction was less favourable, with the film currently holding a 55% score on Rotten Tomatoes. At the website Metacritic, which uses a normalized rating system, the film received a mixed rating of 44/100 based on 36 reviews.^[7] Ian Freer of Empire Magazine gave the film four stars out of five, observing that "Like any holiday, it is episodic and suffers from repetition but this is gag-for-gag the funniest film of the summer and a fitting end to a much-loved series."^[8] Steve Rose of The Guardian gave the film three stars out of five, giving particular praise to Simon Bird's performance and arguing that the film "updates the teen summer holiday formula surprisingly entertainingly, considering it doesn't subvert it one iota and the formula was already done previously with Holiday on the Buses and Kevin & Perry Go Large among others."^[9] Tim Robey of The Daily Telegraph also gave a positive assessment of the film, praising it as "an enormous hit, a Mamma Mia! for the Hangover demographic."^[10] Screen Daily, on the other hand, gave a mixed review, praising the performances of the main cast and proclaiming the film "Britain’s delayed riposte to American Pie," yet simultaneously arguing that it "can’t quite shake off its TV roots, and plot-wise, this is nothing the Greek tourist board would want to advertise."^[11] In contrast, Margaret Pomeranz from At the Movies called the characters "gormless" and said, "I’m giving this one star really generously".

The Inbetweeners Movie: Main Cast Interviews

The Inbetweeners Movie: World Premiere Interviews

The Inbetweeners Movie Bloopers

The Inbetweeners Movie Clips

The Inbetweeners Movie Trailer