Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Christopher Coulter asks about this article about a computer program that supposedly predicts box office. Unfortunately, one of the variables used in predicting box office is how many theaters the movie's opening in. Typically, if a movie's a disaster, it doesn't open in as many theaters as a movie that's at least okay. The studios and exhibitors dump it. Another variable is strength of cast. You don't get a strong cast, on average if the script is dreadful. So the program is meaningless, especially since it's only vaguely right three quarters of the time. If I could tell you within $100 million dollars how well a movie was going to do, but only 75% percent of the time, would you consider me a marketing whiz?

What's much more meaningful is that they can by and large tell by Sunday how well a movie's going to do box office, basically by looking at how word of mouth spreads from Friday to Saturday.

Technorati tags: marketing; film

3:30 PM

1 Comments:

Soon, as the article in the NY Times that Denis pointed me to indicates, we will know within hours whether a film is a blockbuster or not via the DVD sales tracking.

By  Cunningham, at 5:51 PM  

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