6 Ways 'Step Up' Danced Its Way to Franchise Fame

Step Up: All In, opening this Friday, is the fifth film in the dance-movie franchise. The Step Up series has now produced more big screen installments than the Terminator series and, with $617 million in receipts and counting, grossed more worldwide box-office dollars than all eight Muppet movies, all 10 Halloween movies, and all 12 Friday the 13th movies. Step Up has done this with Hollywood-cheap budgets (none have topped $50 million; three of the five came in at $30 million or less) and little fanfare (the new movie, set in the worlds of Las Vegas and reality-competition TV, is the first in the series to score even 50 percent critical approval at Rotten Tomatoes). Perhaps most remarkable, Step Up's accomplishments have come with Channing Tatum, the franchise's original and biggest breakout star, largely out of the picture.

We spoke to Adam Shankman (Rock of Ages, Hairspray), who has produced all of the Step Up movies along with his producing partner and sister, Jennifer Gibgot, to find out the strategy behind the franchise’s success:

1. Don’t have a strategy. "None of us ever had the intention of turning this into a franchise," Shankman says, "but the audience just keeps showing up." The first movie, 2006’s Step Up, about a breakdancing delinquent (Tatum, in his first major starring role) who falls for a Baltimore ballet student (Jenna Dewan, who married her leading man in 2009), was a one-shot romantic drama with dancing as its backdrop, the producer says. Then the $12 million movie grossed $114 million worldwide, and its then-studio Disney wanted a sequel, albeit a no-frills, straight-to-video sequel, à la Universal’s Bring It On cheerleader franchise. Jon M. Chu, at the time a feature-length-film novice, was hired to direct.

"When he came in and we were all talking about what the movie could be …the executives at Disney said this should go to the big screen, and we all looked at each other and said, ‘Great, why not?’" Shankman recalls. "It’s just kept rolling since then.… As a business model, it seems insane to stop making them as long as they’re making this much money."

2. Give the guys some moves. Teen girls and young women ages 13 to 25 make up the core Step Up audience, but compared with a Twilight movie, the franchise is a model of gender equality: More than one-third of opening-weekend ticket buyers for the Miami-based Step Up Revolution were male. “Boys never feel weird about going to these movies,” Shankman says. “There is an athletic muscle to them that always works.”

3. Speak in a universal language — like dance. Overseas audiences — long the key to Hollywood’s bottom line — are especially important to Step Up's longevity. Shankman says that Lionsgate, which took over the franchise with Step Up Revolution, wasn’t sold on a fifth movie after the 2012 film, released opposite The Dark Knight Rises, limped along to a $35 million domestic gross. But Shankman says when the film topped $100 million overseas, the studio’s international unit weighed in on the sequel discussion with a “big, rousing ‘yes, please.’” So far, All In, which opened last month in Europe and Asia, has obliged. In markets such as Russia, the new movie is running ahead of Revolution, and it’s already grossed $26 million internationally.

4. The Fast and the Furious factor. Much as 2009’s Fast & Furious brought Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster, and Michelle Rodriguez back into the fold (and drove that franchise to the next box-office level), Step Up: All In brings together players from across its franchise universe — chiefly, Briana Evigan (from Step Up 2: The Streets) and Ryan Guzman (from Step Up Revolution). “I’ve always looked at the way the Fast and the Furious franchise has maintained their place in the marketplace largely by following these people that we love,” Shankman says. “We have been very mindful to keep track of characters people love the most.”

5. Get lucky. Other dance films have inspired the occasional big-screen sequel (see Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo). Until Step Up, none inspired four of them. “Between So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing With the Stars, I think we lucked into a cultural zeitgeist around a renewed global love of dancing,” Shankman says.

6. Don’t have an exit strategy. "It’s not like a Twilight or anything of the Y.A. world where there’s an endgame for these characters,” Shankman says. “The only thing [the audience is] anticipating is great dancing, hearing great music, and really having a great spirit around it with some characters that they really like.” So can we expect future Step Up movies? ”If this movie makes another $140 million to $150 million [worldwide],” he says, “you better believe another one is going to happen.”

Watch a trailer for the latest film in the series, Step Up: All In: