A Box Office Analysis: Factors Influencing Film Profitability

Movie production companies are interested in understanding what factors contribute to a financially successful film. Box office data from all 2019 film releases was collected from Kaggle and enhanced with additional features to address this question while controlling for potential confounders using a hierarchical model. Unsurprisingly, a film’s budget and IMDB score have statistically significant effects on profitability at the 95% level. On average, a $1 budget increase yields an additional $2.43 in profit and a one point IMDB score increase nets ~$45 million of increased profit. Surprisingly, an augmented field called ‘Title.Sentiment’, which captures the polarity of a film’s title in terms of positive/negative connotation, reveals a ~$97 million net profit increase per unit gain of polarity score. For production companies, it’s not always feasible to create high budget, critically acclaimed films, but they can adjust the title. Based on this analysis, a low cost way to drive more profitability for production companies is title new releases positively, as audiences seem more inclined to view these types of films.