The Industries New(ish) Obsession with Penguins

It's not that hard to believe that over 86% of the planet's population find penguins to be absolutely adorable. They are some of the silliest and cutest birds on the planet!

It was only a matter of time before Hollywood would realize this and capitalize on it for a pretty penny. Big producers have monetized these furry little critters and made a huge profit off of them. What is worse is that these penguins did not get to share in the wealth at all. In fact, few penguins are even aware they their species is a Hollywood hit.

Some might say that this isn't a big dear or that there are bigger issues going on right now, but when you look at how much Hollywood has profited off penguins, the numbers are jaw dropping. Let me try and put this in perspective for you:

8 Ball Bunny (1950)

Mr. Forbush and the Penguins (1971)

A.K.A

Cry of the Penguins

The Adventures of Lolo the Penguin (1988)

Shocked yet? If not, let me keep going cause I'm not even close to being done

March of the Penguins (2005)

Farce of the Penguins (2007)

Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011)

Oddball (2015)

Adventures of the Penguin King (2013)

This doesn't even begin to complete the list of penguin movies out there. All films combined probably raised over one billion dollars, and again, not one penguin saw a single cent of that money.

The Art of Using Birds in Movie Titles

For ages, movie producers have tried to find new and innovative ways to make their movie a blockbuster. One common trend that has been observed most frequently in the past decade has been the use of birds in the titles of movies.

Some of the most successful and highly-acclaimed movies of all time have used birds in their title: Black Swan (2010), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), and Chicken Little (2004) to name a few.

There is speculation over when this trend started but most movie buffs agree that the first big movie that used a bird in its title was Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 thriller, The Birds. After The Birds's gigantic success, many movies followed in its path, but were forced to take circuitous methods of using bird names.

There are many ways you can go about using birds in your title. Some movie makers like to make movies about penguins and be very straightforward with their titles such as Penguins of Madagascar (2014) and March of the Penguins (2005) while others like to take trickier approaches such as Robin Hood (1973), Robin Hood (2010), and Black Hawk Down (2001).

Although these movies took the approach of adding a bird in the title while keeping birds out of the plot, nobody has done as good of a job at subliminally inserting a bird in a movie title than Michael Moore with his widely successful 2002 documentary Bowling for Columbine which cleverly inserted the word "owl" into the title.

We might never know if the fact that birds are in the titles of these movies are what made them successful but we can at least say with some certainty that the use of birds didn't hurt the films.