J. M. Barrie Gets the Miramax Treatment: Finding (and Marketing) Neverland

This article uses the DVD material for the Miramax film Finding Neverland to explore the marketing of children's films. Miramax is a subsidiary of Disney, and Finding Neverland's DVD marketing aligns it with Disney's brand image. The main DVD featurette reinterprets Finding Neverland and its stars according to an unspoken template: child-centered fantastic spectacle that supports wish-fulfillment and firmly excludes death or unhappiness. The template fits clumsily, yet such blatant reinterpretation inadvertently reveals key features of Disney/Miramax's marketing strategies for family films. More broadly, this case study suggests scholars should take corporate brand identities and synergistic business models into account when examining the conception and marketing of children's films.