What is the logic behind these prepositions in this context?
[For] Selznick and MGM, A Tale of Two Cities [followed on directly from] the commercial and critical success, the previous year, of David Copperfield. Betty Box and Ralph Thomas had not engaged with Dickens before, but there had already been five British adaptations of his novels since the end of the Second World War, financed mostly by the Rank Organization, including the most enduring and distinguished of the five, the David Lean film of Great Expectations.

These sentences are from an essay about Dickens' novels and their film adaptations.
I'm confused by the prepositions "for" at the beginning and "from","on" as in "followed on directly from". Does "from" indicate that the film A Tale of Two Cities followed the film David Copperfield [because of] the latter's success? Or should I parse the sentence this way: A Tale of Two Cities followed [on] directly the commercial and critical success of David Copperfield [from] the previous year?

Thank you very much for you help!!What is the logic implied by the preposition "For" at the beginning? Does it mean "as far as they're concerned"?

Question

What is the logic behind these prepositions in this context?
[For] Selznick and MGM, A Tale of Two Cities [followed on directly from] the commercial and critical success, the previous year, of David Copperfield. Betty Box and Ralph Thomas had not engaged with Dickens before, but there had already been five British adaptations of his novels since the end of the Second World War, financed mostly by the Rank Organization, including the most enduring and distinguished of the five, the David Lean film of Great Expectations.

These sentences are from an essay about Dickens' novels and their film adaptations. 
I'm confused by the prepositions "for" at the beginning and "from","on" as in "followed on directly from". Does "from" indicate that the film A Tale of Two Cities followed the film David Copperfield [because of] the latter's success? Or should I parse the sentence this way: A Tale of Two Cities followed [on] directly the commercial and critical success of David Copperfield [from] the previous year?

Thank you very much for you help!!What is the logic implied by the preposition "For" at the beginning? Does it mean "as far as they're concerned"?

Answer

You are correct. The only thing I would add is that the word "on" is not a preposition in context, but an adverbial particle in the phrasal verb "to follow on" meeting "to continue a pattern."

Answer

You"ve got the idea for the "for" at the beginning. It means "to them" or (like you said ) "as far as they're concerned". The "followed on directly from" is a wordy way of saying "followed after" in that without the successes the previous year Tale of Two cities would not have happened. An easier way of saying this might be to say the movie was built on the successes of the previous year.