Non-economic Determinants of Commercial Success in the Movie Industry

This paper examines non-economic factors affecting box office revenues of a fiction movie. Through analyzing a number of selected indicators, which include film’s genre, budget, cast, the release date, critics’ reception, and the rest that are mentioned in the main body, this study aims to define the elements that influence a movie’s sales the most. Another parallel objective of this research is to compare the effect of the selected factors and to discuss their interrelation. The ultimate purpose of this paper is to predict movie’s commercial success, basing on the data available and, hence, to reduce uncertainty, which is associated with every new movie project. As for the study’s methodology, the research is solely based on the existing data, that are available at the IMDb Pro, world’s largest movie database and the most credible tool for entertainment industry professionals. Using a linear regression model, a sample of more than 130 movies, that were released in 2019 in the United States and Canada and were distributed massively, is picked and examined for the effect of previously mentioned determinants on the total box office revenues (domestic and foreign). As regards to results of the research, the outcome expected is the definition of the degree of factors’ contribution to the motion picture’s sales on different stages of the release, as well as the examined predictive force of the production personnel. After the examination of the pool of indicator’s obtained from the web, the extents of contribution of both classical and uncommon factors were defined. Among the new significant non-economic predictors of the commercial success of the movie were such factors as the viewers’ online activity and the online media coverage of a motion picture. This outcome may be taken into account in the process of decision-making by the movie industry professionals.