Why did Ex Machina Succeed at the box office?
Ex Machina did very well at the box office considering it is a low budget British film. Analysing how the film was made and advertised could explain its success. It did not have any big action scenes or big actors. The film is sci-fi obviously shown by its futuristic ideas and science. It is also considered British so is surprising it did so well with such a small budget, usually only large budget films make a profit and this is one of only a few exceptions. Alex Garland made his directing debut with this film as well as writing it. Garland knew the film would not appeal to a mainstream audience but to film aficionados. The creation of the film was very different to most big films using almost no CGI/SFX. The stars of the film were relatively unknown and had only been in a few films and TV series between them. The stars were Domhnall Gleeson as Caleb, Oscar Isaac as Nathan and Alicia Vikander as Ava, these actors were the only ones on screen for more than a few minutes throughout the whole film. As said before they are unknown but Gleeson will be a character in the upcoming Star Wars movie which will catapult him into fame.
As said in the introduction Ex Machina is a low budget, British film. Garland directed the film with that budget and managed to pull it off, it made approximately $36.9 million at the box office worldwide, it managed to gross $3.8 million in the UK and over $25.4 million in America. This was unexpected as it was not like most profitable films because it had unusual themes that do not usually appeal to the mainstream audiences. The film was produced by a number of small studios as none of them had sufficient funds to do it on their own these included DNA Films, Film4 and Scott Rudin Productions. DNA Films was founded by Andrew Macdonald and Duncan Kenworthy. They have produced several other films such as Dredd, trainspotting and 28 days later all making a profit, they are well known as one of the biggest film production companies in the UK. They all worked together to get the $15 million budget and finally achieved it, setting the movie in motion and was finally released in January 2015. It won a Jury Prize at the 2015 Gerardmer Film Festival.
Alex Garland started thinking about the movie and it’s pre production after he had always been interested in AI and always had conversations with his friends on whether robots could ever be sentient, when he used his first computer he sometimes felt like it had it’s own mind which further added to this idea. The conversations with his friends were what got him to really look at it in detail and found it to be very interesting. This inspire Garland to sit down and write about AI, he later came back to finish it calling it ‘Ex Machina’. The science in Ex Machina is mostly sound apart from the made up AI which has not been worked out yet, this brought in a new crowd that enjoyed the science part of the movie.But not just the niche viewers were intrigued by his film, the futuristic nature of the film showing his view of how the world could be one day interested many more people and brought even more to watch his film.
The producers Andrew Macdonald and Allon Reich did a great job keeping on schedule and on budget, they only took 4 weeks to complete filming. The locations used were Pinewood Studios and two weeks at Landscape Hotel in Valldalen Norway and lastly the Bloomberg Head Office in London was used for the opening scene. The cameras used were digital 4K and a great effort was put towards preventing fluorescent light often used in sci-fi movies, to get around this they used 15,000 mini-tungsten pea bulb lights. The locations were relatively simple but gave off a great effect, the Landscape Hotel looked fantastic in the movie with the futuristic building fitting right into the sci-fi theme.It was filmed in digital 4K to give a great image quality without spending hundreds of thousands on cameras. Most of the shots were long compared to other movies which therefore made editing slightly quicker. It was shot with no special effects or green screens, all of the effects were added in later but they filmed the same scene twice one with Ava wearing a robot suit and one without her in shot so they could make her insides look see through and futuristic.
Post production was very different to any big film using almost no CGI. The film was originally released on four screens in the US with a 1 hour 59 minutes run time. Eventually they increased to 1200 screens and after the Avengers was at the cinema it climbed to 2000 screens all with almost no marketing. One of the main reasons this low budget movie succeeded was its small yet clever marketing, at a festival they set up a tinder account that was a robot and got people to interact with it which then led to an Instagram account advertising Ex Machina. This was widely criticised but in turn created a lot of media attention and therefore made more people want to watch the film. The marketing team also released an app where Ava could draw your face which was not as popular as the tinder stunt but still helped. The film was released perfectly as Avengers was released at the same time so people went to see the Avengers and also saw Ex Machina or saw a poster and decided to go again another time. This pushed the profits hugely, word of mouth was also huge adding to the number of people watching the film.
People find its success very surprising because it is a low budget film which has some actual science in it and does not go along with the normal ‘happy ending’ nearly all Hollywood movies have. The movie has gone more for an artistic approach than make money at all costs with a realistic ending. Nearly all movies that do this never even break even so the fact that Ex Machina made a big profit (for a small film) is incredible. The combination of great free marketing and a brilliantly made film made it the success it is.
