Family-Friendly Content Fuels the Rise of Major Franchises
Movieguide® Contributor
Clean content that families can watch together is the most successful form of entertainment, and a large part of that is family-friendly franchises.
Franchises are “the cornerstone of entertainment success,” a recent study by Ampere Analysis reported. The company looked at commissions between 2022 and 2024 and found that franchises had a large market share—20% in fact.
Many of the top-20 scripted franchise-based commissions were children and family oriented. Like, the MCU, LEGO, SESAME STREET, and STAR WARS, per Kidscreen. Last year, over 60% of the top 100 most popular titles in 2024, among movies and shows, were based on pre-existing franchises.
According to Box Office Mojo’s rankings, 8 out of 10 of the US’s most successful franchises ever are franchises that families can enjoy together. When it comes to total media profits for the top ten highest-grossing franchises worldwide, they’re nearly all children or teen oriented.
In 2020, Netflix founder Reed Hastings shared that he wants Netflix to have massive franchises like STAR WARS.
“The thing that many studios are able to do is create great franchises,” Hastings said. “We’re making great progress on that with ‘Stranger Things’ and other properties, but compared to ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Star Wars,’ we’ve got a long way to go.” And it looks like the streamer still has a long way to go, because it’s now 2025 and it still doesn’t have any collection of original movies that compare to STAR WARS or INDIANA JONES.
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Disney is infamous for leaning into its franchises and it’s easy to see why. It’s what NYU professor Charles Schreger calls “the blockbuster strategy.”
Even though expectations for franchise films are higher after every release, “it’s smarter to make a bunch of really expensive movies than it is to have a larger portfolio of inexpensive movies,” he said.
The rise of franchises isn’t due to just commissions, though. Distributors are increasingly interested in franchise films. The number of franchise movies in distributors’ catalogs went up to 95 last year, compared to 67 in 2023.
Distributors are attracted to the idea of taking popular franchises and expanding them to other countries, while streamers are more interested in expanding IP to build up local audiences. Netflix made franchise extensions in 22 countries between 2022 and 2024.
Viewers are the most attracted to franchises. Adults and children alike enjoy franchises because they’re already familiar with characters and know what kind of content they can expect. They are especially ideal for parents, who want to get a good idea of what kind of content their kids are consuming.
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