Genre is important for the creation and marketing of films, it is a key component in the production of films in Hollywood. Richard Maltby states that “critics place movies into generic categories as a way of dividing up the map of Hollywood cinema into smaller, more manageable, and slightly discrete areas” (Maltby, 1995, p. 107). Genre was also conducted by Hollywood to ensure a profit. Profitable and successful movies in Hollywood would be used as a type of framework for the next big film to secure another profitable Hollywood film. Thomas Schatz argues that “If it is initially a popular success, a film story is reworked in later movies and repeated until it becomes a spatial, sequential, and thematic pattern of familiar actions and relationships.”…show more content… 111), Maltby suggests that this wasn't just used as a profitable and cost effective technique for Hollywood filmmakers but was also used to please the audience's appeal for familiarity and…show more content… Many complex films use elements from different genres and there are overlaps which makes the genre unclear and more of a hybrid as suggest by Steve Neale (Naremore, 1990, p. 20). With many films being so complex in their narrative they begin to use conventions from multiple genres which makes it difficult to place films into just one set genre, for example Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead uses conventions from the horror genre by the use of zombies in the narrative and a gory mise-en-scene, while it also features the comedic duo Simon Pegg and Nick Frost who are known for their comedy. This film is an example of genre hyrbids, a film that has elements from multiple genres so cannot be categorised as just one. Genre hybridisation is often used to target a larger audience and increase the profits by appealing to audiences of two or three different genres. Shaun Of The Dead's marketing used it's genre hybrid as an unique selling point by using the phrase “Shaun Of The Dead: The World's First Rom-Zom-Com” which is a play on the genre rom-com and acts as another hybrid of the romantic genre. Richard Maltby discusses this method of targeting larger audiences with the use of genre hybridisation in earlier Hollywood films such as Twelve O'Clock High by targeting the women who would usually not be interested in a war film
