Modeling the Box Office by Analyzing Communication

Category: Science & Technology
Posted: June 19, 2012 08:36PM
Author: Guest_Jim_*

Everybody in Hollywood and any other media creation center, whether it is movies, music, books, etc. would love to be able to pick out what will be the most and least successful before release. Researchers at Tottori University have developed a mathematical model capable of just that for movies, as reported by the Institute of Physics.

The model the researchers created examines and classifies communication concerning a particular film. Unsurprisingly advertising and word-of-mouth communication impacts whether someone goes to see a movie, and this is what the model capitalizes on. The researchers collected data from 60 days before a movie reached Japanese cinemas to 100 days after the opening and compiled the day-to-day cost of the advertising with the word-of-mouth communication. When this plot had the box office returns for the films overlaid, the two datasets match fairly well.

The accuracy of this model surprised the researchers who made it. Normally one would not expect mathematics would be able to so well predict a human response, like going to a movie because they heard it was good. That is not stopping the researchers from investigating if the model can be applied to other things, including online music, soft drinks, and local events.

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