Oscar Buzz and the Influence of Word of Mouth on Movie Success 3030411796, 9783030411794

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Oscar Buzz and the Influence of Word of Mouth on Movie Success Owen Eagan

Oscar Buzz and the Influence of Word of Mouth on Movie Success

Owen Eagan

Oscar Buzz and the Influence of Word of Mouth on Movie Success

Owen Eagan Department of Communication Studies Emerson College Boston, MA, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-41179-4    ISBN 978-3-030-41180-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41180-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

Like many people, I love going to the movies. When I was young, going to the movies was a special occasion. I still think it is but it was a more unique experience in the 1970s since entertainment options were more limited. Cable television was not widely available and most television programming was provided by the three major networks. The 1970s had many popular television shows such as M*A*S*H, All in the Family, Happy Days and The Jeffersons but shows for kids were generally reserved for Saturday morning and mostly consisted of cartoons. I loved some of those shows including The Bugs Bunny Show, especially since we had to wait a week to watch them. That said, the limited programming that was available had its benefits. As kids, during the week we spent most of our time outside playing in the neighborhood usually until dinner and then after dinner until the streetlights came on. This was before the widespread use of VCRs. Therefore, once a movie was shown in a movie theater, it could be the last time you saw it unless it was later shown on television or rereleased in theaters. As a result, the experience of going to the movies at that time was something that you anticipated and appreciated more. The movies were always magical for me. Some transported you to other worlds, some inspired you with their stories and some made you believe that anything was possible. But the most memorable movie for me as a 10-year-old was Star Wars as it was unlike anything I had seen. Part of its appeal was its classic “Hero’s Journey” storyline of the simple farmer who meets his mentor and is called upon to perform extraordinary deeds. The v

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movie also consisted of memorable characters, groundbreaking special effects and one of the best film scores by John Williams. Its release not only generated excitement from moviegoers but even news programs reported on the lines the film was generating at movie theaters. Financially, the film was also a huge success. The movie was produced for $11 million and would go on to earn more than $775 million worldwide (Murphy 2017; Acuna 2015). Though I never worked in the entertainment industry, I always thought that the only significant risks involved were those borne by actors and actresses. For instance, you have a better chance of playing in the NBA and getting struck by lightning than becoming a professional actor (OnlineCasino.ca 2016). However, the illusion I had of Hollywood was shattered upon reading a New Yorker magazine article in 1997. The article was entitled “Chaos in Hollywood” and it discussed the findings of a study conducted by the economists Arthur De Vany and David Walls. Their study, which attempted to explain the volatility in the movie industry, found that movie outcomes mostly resembled chaos theory because they could not be predicted. Specifically, in their movie sample of 300 movies, they discovered that 20 percent of the films earned 80 percent of the revenue (Cassidy 1997). They also found that it was impossible to say why audiences were attracted to certain films and not to others. And, of the studio executives, De Vany said, “None of them know what they’re doing” (Cassidy 1997). This was astounding to me. I wondered how movies could involve so much risk. However, according to De Vany and Walls, the chaos of the film industry was due to the way filmgoers and potential filmgoers exchange information. That is, since people won’t know if they like a movie until they see it, they primarily rely on what other people tell them (Cassidy 1997). It was at this point that I realized how influential word of mouth was on movies. But, even so, I thought that there must be a way for studios and filmmakers to test and evaluate their ideas and concepts through market research. Surely, George Lucas must have known Star Wars was going to be a hit, especially since the franchise has grossed over $9 billion to date. Surprisingly, that wasn’t the case. During an interview with Stephen Colbert at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2015, George Lucas said that he didn’t think the film was going to be successful. He also said that the studio and its board didn’t have any faith in the film (Acuna 2015).

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After the movie opened, he got a call from Alan Ladd Jr., the President of 20th Century Fox who was one of the few believers of the film. He asked George to turn on the television to CBS news. Walter Cronkite was reporting on the sensation of the opening of Star Wars and the lines around the block (Acuna 2015). This story perfectly captures the essence of this book. If George Lucas couldn’t have predicted the success of Star Wars, who could have? Boston, MA, USA

Owen Eagan

References Acuna, Kirsten. 2015. George Lucas Was Convinced ‘Star Wars’ Would Be a Disaster Until This Phone Call in 1977. Business Insider, April 18. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/when-george-lucas-knew-star-warswas-a-hit-2015-4 Cassidy, John. 1997. Chaos in Hollywood. The New Yorker, March 31. Murphy, Mike. 2017. The $11 Million Spent on ‘Star Wars’ in 1977 Was the Best Film Investment Ever Made. Quartz. May 25. Retrieved from https:// qz.com/990219/the-11-million-spent-on-star-wars-in-1977-was-the-bestfilm-investment-ever-made/ Online Casino. The Odds of Success. Retrieved from https://www.onlinecasino. ca/odds-of-success

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the assistance of many people. First, I would like to thank Raul Reis, the Dean of the School of Communication, and J. Gregory Payne, the Chair of the Department of Communication Studies, for the institutional support that they provided for this project. This includes the programs and resources necessary to conduct this research, present the findings at conferences and publish the material in academic journals. Also, I’d like to thank my colleagues Grayson Kimball, who specializes in quantitative analysis, and Eiki Satake, who specializes in Bayesian analysis, for sharing their statistical expertise on my various projects from research design to data analysis. In addition, my colleagues Vincent Raynauld, Seounmi Han Youn and William Anderson offered invaluable counsel on my research methods and provided insightful feedback on my findings. Furthermore, I have numerous students to thank who served as research assistants for me over the years. They include Shoshana Baraschi-Ehrlich, Elissa Chojnicki, Lindsey Goldin, Samantha Gravity, Natalie Langlois, Siyu Liu, Stporn Nithikarnphisitha, Mary Pettingell, Alexandra Shore, Abigail Silverman, Frida Sternbach Rostoker, Dylan Walton, Dorothy Wigon, Sayge Willis and Ryan Wooley. Their shared passion for my research projects was reflected in the quality of their work and inspired me throughout the process. I know that they’ll all go on to do great things. Moreover, I consider myself extremely fortunate to have great relationships with a number of thought leaders in the entertainment industry. As experts in the field, their contributions provided rare perspectives and ix

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further contextualized the content of the book. Therefore, special thanks are due to Kymn Goldstein, Tim Gray, Pete Hammond, Judy Laster, K.J. Matthews, Eric Moore, Bruce Nash and Claudia Puig. Finally, I’d like to thank my wife Nicole for all she did to allow me to pursue my academic endeavors from teaching and research to writing this book. With three children, any additional work on my part requires additional work on her part. And, I’m always grateful to my mother Ginny and sister Ginny for their lifelong support and loving advice. We all need critics to make us better and keep us humble.

Contents

1 Introduction  1 References   6 2 The Enduring Appeal of Movies  9 References  15 3 Risks & Rewards 17 References  24 4 Film Festivals 25 References  38 5 The Influence of Film Critics 41 References  49 6 Movie Buzz & Information Cascades 53 References  64 7 The Influence of Word of Mouth 67 References  83 8 Oscar Campaigns 87 References  97

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9 Insights from the Experts 99 References 121 10 Closing Thoughts123 References 126 Index127

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3 Fig. 5.4 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2 Fig. 7.3 Fig. 7.4 Fig. 7.5 Fig. 7.6

Tickets sold vs. box office revenue. (The Numbers 2019) Film festival awards Premiered or shown First weekend (revenue per theater) Total domestic gross revenue First weekend mean (wide releases) Total domestic gross mean (wide releases) Biggest weekends Critics & audience ratings Diffusion curve. (Rogers 2003) High versus low performers Pre- versus post-social media Gross profit versus production budget Hashtags versus revenue Tweet rate versus revenue

13 35 37 46 46 47 48 55 55 69 73 74 76 80 81

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract  This chapter begins with a discussion of box office bombs and blockbusters. It discusses some of their distinguishing characteristics, or lack thereof, and how the inherent risks of making movies have been recognized by industry experts and academics alike. It also provides a preview of each chapter and its role in helping us answer the question why word of mouth is the most important determinant of a movie’s success. Keywords  Word of mouth • Movies • Box office • Diffusion of Innovations • William Goldman • Nobody knows anything • Emerson College In 2012, the movie John Carter, a science fiction movie released by Walt Disney Studios, became shorthand for a box office disaster as the company reported losing $200 million on the film (Mendelson 2015; Nakashima 2012). Conversely, Paranormal Activity, which was released in 2009, had a production budget of only $15,000 yet earned $194 million at the box office, becoming the most profitable movie ever made (Avila 2010; Frankel 2009; The Numbers 2019). What accounts for these dramatically different outcomes at the box office? John Carter had all of the elements of a Hollywood blockbuster. It was based on a popular book entitled A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice © The Author(s) 2020 O. Eagan, Oscar Buzz and the Influence of Word of Mouth on Movie Success, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41180-0_1

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Burroughs, the renowned author of the Tarzan series (Meslow 2012). It was produced by Andrew Stanton, the Academy Award-winning director of Wall-E and Finding Nemo. It starred Taylor Kitsch and featured Willem Dafoe as one of the leading characters. And, it had the financial backing of Walt Disney Studios. Paranormal Activity was written, directed, produced and edited by Oren Peli, a former software designer, and was filmed over seven days and nights in his San Diego house (Raphael 2009). It also featured newcomers Katie Featherson and Micah Sloat. Prior to the film, Katie was a waitress at Buca di Beppo at the Universal CityWalk and Micah was a computer programmer (Villarreal 2009). Some of the reasons for John Carter’s challenges have been attributed to an ineffective marketing campaign, which is evident in the fact that the film only earned $30 million on its domestic opening weekend (Mendelson 2015). And, some of the credit for Paranormal Activity’s success has been attributed to the marketing campaign by Paramount Pictures, the film’s eventual distributor. This campaign featured a “Demand It” option on Facebook and Twitter to allow fans to bring the film to their local cinemas and a “Tweet your scream” social media campaign (Raphael 2009). But if marketing was the only significant variable in determining a movie’s success, you would imagine that there wouldn’t be as much risk involved. After all, marketing is certainly something you can test and measure. But there are many Hollywood box office disasters other than John Carter. In fact, shortly after the release of John Carter, a New York Times headline proclaimed “‘Ishtar’ Lands on Mars” (Barnes 2012). The headline is a reference to the movie Ishtar, the 1987 comedy directed by Elaine May that starred Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman (Bramesco 2017). The movie is about two untalented singer-songwriters who go to Morocco to break into show business but get embroiled in a plot to overthrow the Emir of the fictitious country of Ishtar. The film earned just $14 million on a $51 million budget, and is widely hailed as one of the worst movies of all time (Bramesco 2017). Other movies have experienced similarly dire financial consequences. For example, the 1980 movie Heaven’s Gate nearly bankrupted United Artists, which was chronicled in the documentary “Final Cut: The Making of ‘Heaven’s Gate’ and the Unmaking of a Movie Studio.” The film cost $36 million to produce at a time when the average budget was $12.5 million and would go on to make only $3.5 million at the box office (Welkos 2004; Barber 2015).

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Among the other commonly cited box office misses is The Adventures of Pluto Nash. This movie from 2002, which is about a nightclub owner on the moon starring Eddie Murphy, cost close to $100 million to produce and only generated $7.1 million worldwide (Eller 2017). The fact is, even in an era of big data, making movies is not without risk. That’s why the adage “Nobody knows anything” is still a common refrain in Hollywood. It’s a quote from the book Adventures in the Screen Trade by the Academy Award-winning screenwriter William Goldman and in some circles has become known as the Goldman Rule. In his book, Goldman argues that no one really knows for certain what’s going to work and that, at best, every time is based on an educated guess (Goldman 1989). Goldman’s assertion was later quantified in a study conducted by Arthur De Vany of the University of California at Irvine and David Walls of the University of Hong Kong (Cassidy 1997). De Vany and Walls analyzed 300 movies released between May 1985 and January 1986 and found that audiences were attracted to a small number of films. For example, as mentioned earlier, they found a sort of Pareto Principle which states that 80 percent of the consequences are generated by 20 percent of the causes. In this case, 80 percent of the revenue was generated by 20 percent of the films. However, there was no way to determine why audiences were attracted to some films and not to others—not the genre, the cast or the budget. The best predictor they found was how the movie performed the previous week (Cassidy 1997). That is, because people won’t know if they like a movie until they see it, many rely on the recommendations of others. These recommendations, in turn, can have a positive or negative effect on a film. In fact, De Vany and Walls argued that word of mouth could not only determine whether a movie was a hit but that it could kill a film as well (Cassidy 1997). Moreover, movies are susceptible to information cascades upon their release. Information cascades generally occur when people observe the behaviors of others and make decisions based on those observations while ignoring their own personal information (Palmer 2019). There is no direct communication between individuals but, in addition to observations, they can occur through an assortment of communication channels  such as earned, paid and social media. Therefore, this book explores the effects of both word of mouth and information cascades on movies. However, in the process of doing so, we will first explore the enduring appeal of movies. That is, why has going to the cinema been, and why does it continue to be, so popular? While Netflix and other streaming services persist in their efforts to disrupt the movie industry, why has the appeal of going to the movies endured? Will this appeal remain in light of current trends?

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Next, we’ll look at why movies are so unpredictable based on the experiences of some of the most notable producers and experts in the field. For instance, what are the differences between blockbusters and bombs? Is there a rule to making a successful movie? What is their response to William Goldman’s assertion that “Nobody knows anything”? We’ll then discuss ways of mitigating these risks through an interview with Bruce Nash, the Founder and President of Nash Information Services, a leading provider of movie data and research. The abundance of data that is now available can help us understand industry trends, and the profits and losses for different types of movies. We’ll also discuss the importance of conducting a financial analysis and the value that his company can provide by interpreting this data. From there, we’ll examine the role of film festivals for filmmakers. We’ll consult with organizers of successful film festivals and offer some perspectives from industry research. That is, what do film festivals have in common and what makes them unique? What predictive value do the largest film festivals have on the Academy Award for Best Picture and why? And what percentage of independent films will get a theatrical release? We’ll discuss the influence of film critics based on a variety of previous studies and research recently conducted by me and my students at Emerson College. How much influence do film critics have in general? Does it vary by the type of film? Do negative reviews have more influence than positive reviews? We’ll then look at the influence of word of mouth and information cascades on the success of movies. In particular, we’ll explore the extent to which marketing has an impact on movies versus recommendations from moviegoers. The abundance of publicly available information about box office data provides us with a rich source for evaluating the performance of movies. This is invaluable for several reasons. First, it allows us to evaluate the sheer popularity of movies. That is, we can see how much money each film generates on its opening weekend and in subsequent weeks. Although there’s so much emphasis placed on a movie’s opening weekend performance, what does that really represent? Is that a good indicator of a movie’s overall appeal? Or is that just an indicator of the quality of its marketing campaign? As we’ll see it’s a little of both. Yet, the best indicator of a movie’s performance isn’t its first weekend. It’s the movie’s second weekend. And why is that? It’s because if people

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who see the movie the first weekend like it, they’ll recommend it to others. And if they don’t, they won’t. This is another reason why box office revenue data presents us with a perfect laboratory for examining the influence of word of mouth. We can essentially assess a movie’s appeal by evaluating its revenue week to week. In fact, we’ve conducted a series of studies over the course of two years which demonstrate that box office revenue can serve as a good proxy for word of mouth. This is because many new products, services and ideas spread in a particular fashion. This tendency was identified by Everett Rogers in a theory he developed called the “Diffusion of Innovations.” Diffusion is defined as “the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system” (Rogers 2003). Rogers developed this theory by studying how the innovation of hybrid seed corn was adopted by Iowa farmers in the 1940s. What he found was that innovations were adopted by different categories of people over a period of time and that diffusion is a social process. In a later study involving the spread of a new drug called tetracycline in the 1960s, Rogers noted the importance of interpersonal networks in the spread of innovations (Rogers 2003). Despite the proliferation of social media, we’ll see that these principles still endure today and that social media simply serves as another channel through which diffusion occurs. After addressing these issues, we’ll explore the history and influence of Oscar campaigns. For instance, most people are unaware that studios and filmmakers typically spend millions of dollars to persuade Academy members to vote for their films. What do these campaigns look like? How much influence do they have? Does winning an Academy Award create an Oscar bounce in terms of revenue? We’ll then consult industry experts such as film critics, journalists and consultants for their perspectives on all of these topics and others. What are their favorite and least favorite movies? What makes a great movie? Is there a formula for success? What more can be done to promote diversity both in front of and behind the camera? Lastly, we’ll offer some closing thoughts that will summarize and interpret all of the issues we’ve discussed. Again, our goal is to answer the question, “Why is word of mouth the most important determinant of a movie’s success?”

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References Avila, Michael. 2010. What’s the Most Profitable Film Ever Made? LiveScience, July 7. Retrieved from http://www.livescience.com/32685-whats-the-mostprofitable-film-ever-made.html Barber, Nicholas. 2015. Heaven’s Gate: From Hollywood Disaster to Masterpiece. BBC, December 4. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/ 20151120-heavens-gate-from-hollywood-disaster-to-masterpiece Barnes, Brooks. 2012. ‘Ishtar’ Lands on Mars. The New York Times, March 11. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/business/media/ ishtar-lands-on-mars.html Bramesco, Charles. 2017. Ishtar at 30: Is It Really the Worst Movie Ever Made? The Guardian, May 15. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/ film/2017/may/15/ishtar-30th-anniversary-worst-movie-ever-elaine-may Cassidy, John. 1997. Chaos in Hollywood. The New Yorker, March 31. Eller, Claudia. The Costliest Box Office Flops of All Time. Los Angeles Times. Copyright 2017. Retrieved from http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/ envelope/cotown/la-et-box-office-flops-pictures-photogallery.html Frankel, Daniel. 2009. ‘Paranormal’ Now the Most Profitable Film Ever. The Wrap, October 28. Retrieved from http://www.thewrap.com/paranormalnow-most-profitable-film-ever-9335 Goldman, William. 1989. Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting. New York: Grand Central Publishing. Mendelson, Scott. 2015. Famous Flops: ‘John Carter’ Became Shorthand For ‘Box Office Bomb.’ Forbes, March 9. Retrieved from https://www.forbes. com/sites/csylt/2014/10/22/revealed-the-307-million-cost-of-disneysjohn-carter/#67fc405b7ba6 Meslow, Scott. 2012. Why Did It Take 100 Years for John Carter to Make It to the Big Screen? The Atlantic, March 8. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic. com/entertainment/archive/2012/03/why-did-it-take-100-years-for-johncarter-to-make-it-to-the-big-screen/254220/ Nakashima, Ryan. 2012. Disney Studio Boss Quits After ‘John Carter’ Loss. USA Today, April 20. Retrieved from https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/ media/story/2012-04-20/rich-ross-disney-studio-boss-quits/54436422/1 Palmer, Barclay. 2019. Understanding Information Cascades. Investopedia, February 17. Retrieved from https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/052715/guide-understanding-information-cascades.asp Raphael, Amy. 2009. How Paranormal Activity Became a Frightening Success. The Guardian, November 20. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/ film/2009/nov/21/paranormal-activity-twitter-facebook Rogers, Everett M. 2003. Diffusion of Innovations. 5th ed. New York: Free Press. The Numbers. 2019. Retrieved from http://www.the-numbers.com

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Villarreal, Yvonne. 2009. A Spine-Tingling’ Ending for Paranormal Activity. Los Angeles Times, October 26. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/2009/ oct/26/entertainment/et-paranormal26 Welkos, Robert W. 2004. ‘Heaven’s Gate’: The Film Flop That Reshaped Hollywood. Los Angeles Times, March 4. Retrieved from http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-heavens-gate-flop-archive-20040612-snap-story.html

CHAPTER 2

The Enduring Appeal of Movies

Abstract  This chapter discusses the strength of box office performance over the years and offers both emotional and economic justifications for this occurrence. It also discusses the history of disruption in the industry and the parts that high-value and low-value customers have played, and continue to play, in this process. It concludes with the opinions of a movie expert on the potential disruption of streaming services on the industry. Keywords  Movies • Box office • Disruption • Price discrimination • High value customers • Time consistency • Streaming services Americans have always had a fascination with movies. And, despite the various disruptions to the movie exhibition business over the years, demand has remained strong for movie theater audiences. According to The Numbers, a data analytics website operated by Nash Information Services, LLC, domestic box office revenue alone in 2018 was $11,960,134,208. Moreover, this figure, when adjusted for inflation, has remained relatively constant over the last 20-plus years despite some ebbs and flows. In fact, domestic box office revenue in 1995 was $5,314,350,848, or $11,129,593,086 in inflation-adjusted revenue (The Numbers 2019). The number of tickets sold in 2018 compared to 1995 was also comparable with 1,312,857,488 sold in 2018 and 1,221,689,691 sold in 1995 (The Numbers 2019). It is worth noting that the population in the © The Author(s) 2020 O. Eagan, Oscar Buzz and the Influence of Word of Mouth on Movie Success, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41180-0_2

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United States increased during that period by 64,364,158 people from 262,803,276 people in 1995 to 327,167,434 in 2018 (U.S. Census Bureau 2017). Regardless, it’s safe to say that demand has remained strong. But why do we love going to the movies? One reason is that research shows it can boost our happiness. For instance, a study conducted by the Institute for Social and Economic Research in the U.K. found that cinema attendance was strongly associated with promoting happiness and reducing anxiety and depression. Specifically, the study found that those who reported attending the cinema at least once a month were twice as likely to be happy than those reporting that they never or almost never attend. The research also found that those who attend the cinema at least monthly are 55 to 62 percent less likely to cite issues with anxiety or depression (Uhrig 2005). Attending the cinema has other benefits as well, such as lower mortality risks. According to another study, those who never attended the cinema had mortality rates nearly 4 times higher than those who even occasionally attend. In each of these studies, the authors recognize the therapeutic effects of movies due to the emotive responses they generate (Uhrig 2005). However, in addition to the appeal of the cinema to individuals, it holds value for the studios as well. Although, one of the more pressing questions is whether theaters will remain first in the release sequence. To answer this question, we need to take a brief look back on how the current release sequence was formed. Much of the Hollywood fare today is the result of the disruption that occurred in the industry with the advent of television. This is because television had two major impacts on the industry. First, by devastating movie theater admissions, it created a more competitive environment among the movie studios, forcing them into higher-risk investments. Second, it further segmented the market into high-value and low-value consumers (Waterman 2005). When television was introduced in 1950s and 1960s, its diffusion had a dramatic impact on theater attendance. As David Waterman writes in his fascinating book, Hollywood’s Road to Riches, “adult per capita admissions declined from a high of about 32 per year in 1943 to a nadir of 4 per year in 1971.”

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Movies dominated the entertainment landscape before television and movie studios typically produced between 250 and 400 movies a year during this period. These films were classified as either A or B movies. The A movies were higher-end productions such as Gone with the Wind and the B movies were lower-end films with lesser talent such as the “factory westerns” (Waterman 2005). However, because the production cost disparities were so wide between movies and television, most of the lower-budget factory productions went to television. As a result, most of the high-end productions remained in the movie industry. In fact, Hollywood’s productions became even more elaborate as the industry sought to differentiate itself from television (Waterman 2005). To illustrate this point, the average cost of a Warner Brothers’ theatrical feature in 1950–1954 was reported to be $1 to $2 million while the average budget for one-hour episodes of Warner Brothers Presents was between $50,000 and $75,000. This was roughly one-tenth the cost on a per hour basis. At the turn of the century, the average cost of an MPAA-produced feature film was over $50 million compared to $1 to $2 million for a one-­ hour television broadcast drama (Waterman 2005). Not only did the studios increase their investments on movies but they made far less of them. In the early 1950s, the studios each produced 30 to 40 releases a year. However, by the 1970s, this number declined to about 10 to 20. And, as the number of films declined, the volatility in the industry rose as there were fewer movies to absorb the risk. This was evident in the variation of annual studio revenues after the 1960s, which had previously been relatively steady (Waterman 2005). Even though the impact of television was dramatic, this medium introduced a new method of price discrimination for the studios. Price discrimination is simply defined as charging customers different prices based on their willingness to pay. For example, retailers are able to attract both high-value customers and low-value customers by offering products at both regular and sales prices periodically (Waterman 2005). The way this occurred in the movie industry was through changes in the release schedule. Before television, movies opened in a sequence of higher-end to lower-end theatres and prices were based on the quality of the theater and the timing of the release. That is, higher-value consumers went to see A movies in plush downtown theaters while lower-value consumers waited for later runs in suburban theaters as the films were released in wider circles (Waterman 2005).

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Television changed the movie release schedule in a few ways. First, it shortened the theatrical window to about four to six weeks. It also essentially replaced the second-tier theaters in the release sequence, thereby segmenting these lower-value consumers from the higher-value consumers (Waterman 2005). After the broadcast television era came the pay media era with the debut of HBO in 1975 and then the proliferation of video sales and rentals that accompanied the rapid growth of VCRs and DVD players in subsequent decades. The introduction of these technologies allowed studios to more effectively segment the market (Waterman 2005). This segmentation involved implicit agreements between the movie studios, who served as the distributors, and the theater owners, who served as the exhibitors, to preserve the video window. This period is defined as the time between a movie’s theatrical opening and its video release, which in general is about five or six months (Waterman 2005). Research shows that this window was largely preserved regardless of the performance of a movie. This was thought to be for the purpose of maintaining an economic principle called “time consistency.” This principle involves the dilemma that companies face when pricing products. In particular, some consumers may wait to purchase products or not purchase them at all in the expectation that prices will eventually drop after high-­ value buyers have been served. Thus, maintaining the time consistency of the video window allows a degree of predictability for consumers (Waterman 2005). Moreover, as new media emerged, they have traditionally followed the principles of market segmentation and price discrimination. That is, those media that offered the highest quality were positioned towards the beginning of the release sequence. However, the question about whether theaters should remain first has persisted (Waterman 2005). There have been several attempts to release movies through other media but all of those experiments failed. But even if the economic benefit of theaters changes, there are other advantages of this medium. Primarily, there is still a degree of uncertainty surrounding a movie’s quality. Therefore, consumers rely on a series of “market signals” to reduce this uncertainty. Primarily, theatrical releases are expected to have higher production values than those released to video or television. Therefore, movies that are released directly to video or television face a significant disadvantage from this negative quality signal (Waterman 2005).

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In the meantime, a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers conducted in 2014 found that box office and digital revenue would climb over the next five years while sales of DVDs and other discs would decline. Further, the study found that electronic home video would overtake physical home video by 2016. The study also found that domestic box office revenue was expected to increase 15.9% from $10.8 billion to $12.5 billion (Lang 2014). However, to get a better understanding of this trend over time, I consulted Bruce Nash, the Founder and President of Nash Information Services, LLC. As discussed earlier, he agreed that box office performance has been relatively consistent over the last few decades when adjusted for inflation. However, ticket sales actually peaked in 2002 and there has been a slow decline since then. Although, its impact on revenue has been offset by the rise in ticket prices (see Fig. 2.1) (Nash 2019). In 1995, there were 1,221,689,691 tickets sold at an average price of $4.35 which resulted in total box office revenue of $5,314,350,848. By comparison, there were 1,312,962,012 tickets sold at an average price of $9.11 for a total of $11,961,086,420 in 2018. However, again, when the total box office figure from 1995 is adjusted for inflation, it is the equivalent of $11,129,593,086 (The Numbers 2019). I asked Bruce what impact he thought the growing number of streaming services would have on the market. Like me, he believes that while

Fig. 2.1  Tickets sold vs. box office revenue. (The Numbers 2019)

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these services will have an impact on the cinema, the market will always be there. Although, he said that the slow decline in ticket sales was likely to continue for some time and that the market would likely be dominated by fewer movies (Nash 2019). With Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and the advent of Disney and Apple, he thinks of these new streaming services as being more of a realignment of the TV space. That is, he believes that the streaming services are becoming the new TV networks. For example, he thinks that they are mostly competing in the home entertainment market along with video games, social networks, etc. (Nash 2019). He added, “It’s really slicing that piece thinner and thinner. In regard to home entertainment, people in the U.S. generally spend about $10 billion at the movies and about $20 billion at home whether it’s on DVDs or Blockbuster before that” (Nash 2019). I asked him about the importance of international markets and the impact of movies like Crazy Rich Asians. He responded, “I believe they’re causing a big creative shift in the industry and that Crazy Rich Asians was a prime example. This movie actually did better domestically than it did internationally but it did well in some international markets such as Singapore and Indonesia. Therefore, Hollywood was not only developing these movies for social justice purposes but was recognizing their economic value, too. As a result, this is likely the type of film that would be replicated” (Nash 2019). There are others in the industry who also believe that these markets can coexist. In 2019, John Fithian, the CEO of the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO), stated at the industry’s trade show, CinemaCon, that he believes the two business models can complement rather than cannibalize each other (Lang 2019). Specifically, he said that he believes that nothing will replace the experience of going to the movies and that endless choices in the home will only intensify competition for theatrical releases (Lang 2019). His position was buttressed by a study that Ernst & Young conducted with NATO which found that people who attended theaters more frequently also streamed more content. In particular, the average streaming hours per week was higher for those who went to the cinema nine times a year or more versus those who only went once or twice (Lang 2019).

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Thus, it seems that movies will likely remain at the beginning of the release sequence for some time. This premise is supported by the enduring theatrical appeal of movies to consumers through the unique experience they provide and to the studios as a means to target high-value customers.

References Lang, Brent. 2014. Digital Home Entertainment to Exceed Physical by 2016, Study Finds. Variety, June 3. Retrieved from http://variety.com/2014/digital/ news/digital-home-entertainment-to-exceed-physical-by-2016-study-finds1201207708/ ———. 2019. NATO Chief Says Streaming Services Benefit From Theatrical Releases. Variety, April 2. Retrieved from https://variety.com/2019/film/ news/cinemacon-netflix-black-panther-captain-marvel-1203177802/ Nash, Bruce. 2019. Interview by Owen Eagan, September 30. The Numbers. 2019. Retrieved from http://www.the-numbers.com Uhrig, S.C. Noah. Cinema Is Good for You: The Effects of Cinema Attendance on Self-Reported Anxiety or Depression and ‘Happiness.’ ISER Working Paper 2005–14. Colchester: University of Essex. United States Census Bureau. 2017. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov Waterman, David. 2005. Hollywood’s Road to Riches. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

CHAPTER 3

Risks & Rewards

Abstract  This chapter reveals the insights of award-winning producers, directors and actors on the risks involved in filmmaking. They discuss the uncertainties surrounding unexpected hits and misses, and respond to William Goldman’s adage about Hollywood that “Nobody knows anything.” Further, a movie finance and statistics expert is consulted on ways in which to mitigate these risks. Keywords  Movies • Box office • Bombs • Blockbusters • William Goldman • Nobody knows anything • Profitable • Return on investment • Bankability index In 2006, HBO produced a documentary called Boffo!: Tinseltown’s Bombs & Blockbusters. The film features interviews with numerous award-­winning producers, directors and actors, and explores what it takes to make a Hollywood hit and avoid a bomb. The theme throughout this movie is the unpredictable nature of filmmaking and whether, as William Goldman said, “Nobody knows anything” (Goldman 1989). Peter Guber is the current Chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment. His films have earned over $3 billion worldwide and he has garnered more than 50 Academy Awards. Among the movies he personally produced were Batman (1989), Rain Man (1988), Gorillas in the Mist (1988), The Witches of Eastwick (1987), The Color Purple (1985), © The Author(s) 2020 O. Eagan, Oscar Buzz and the Influence of Word of Mouth on Movie Success, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41180-0_3

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Flashdance (1983), Missing (1982) and Midnight Express (1978) (IMDb 2019). While interviewed on the magic of moviemaking, he states, “It’s like trying to find lightning, find the bottle, capture lightning in the bottle at the same time and hold off all those people who are praying for your demise” (Couturié 2006). Peter Bogdanovich is an award-winning producer and director who is perhaps best known for Paper Moon (1973) and The Last Picture Show (1971) (IMDb 2019). Said Bogdanovich, “If you have a big hit, suddenly you’ve been deified. Then people want you to have a flop because that’s a better story. And then you oblige them” (Couturié 2006). Tom Rothman is the Chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group and oversees all of the studio’s motion picture production and distribution activities worldwide (Sony Pictures 2019). He is quoted as saying, “What I think that people don’t understand is that really good so-called popcorn movies, commercial cinema, is hard to do. If you think that’s easy to do, you’re nuts” (Couturié 2006). Sydney Pollack was an award-winning producer, director and actor who produced and directed over 40 films including Out of Africa (1985) and Tootsie (1982) (IMDb 2019). According to Pollack, “Sometimes pictures work and sometimes they don’t. There’s a lot of luck connected with making movies, there really is. I’ve made big hits and I’ve made terrible flops. And I don’t know the difference, I swear” (Couturié 2006). Morgan Freeman is a noted actor, director and film narrator. He won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in Million Dollar Baby (2004) and received nominations for his performances in Street Smart (1987), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and Invictus (2009). He is currently seventh on the list of those actors with the top-­ grossing films with a total of $4.57 billion and an average of $71.5 million per film (Box Office Mojo 2019). In Boffo!, he says, “People who are telling you what things are foolproof, idiot-proof, failure-proof, they’re the worst of the lot. Shawshank Redemption in terms of box office was a failure. Total failure. An old black man and an old Jewish woman, c’mon. Penguins, penguins. Penguins? Never fly. So, nobody knows. You never can know” (Couturié 2006). The Shawshank Redemption, an adaptation of a Stephen King novella, was produced for $25 million but only earned $28 million at the box office (The Numbers 2019). While some blamed the film’s poor box office performance on its title, Frank Darabont, the film’s director, believed that this was the result of the movie’s core premise. That is, he thought that when audiences saw two prestigious actors like Tim Robbins

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and Morgan Freeman in a setting behind bars, it would lead them to believe that the movie was depressing (Schager 2016). Despite struggling at the box office, it was released on VHS the following year by Warner Bros. and became one of the best video rentals in the country. The film found a larger audience when the cable network TNT bought the rights in 1997. The movie is now on the American Film Institute’s list of the “100 Greatest American Films of All Time” and is ranked number 1 on IMDb’s 250 “Top Rated Movies” by its users (Obias 2015). Driving Miss Daisy (1989), which was based on a Pulitzer Prize-­ winning play, won an Academy Award for Best Picture. However, Lili and Richard Zanuck, who had purchased the rights to the play, had a difficult time pitching the movie to Hollywood studios due to its limited appeal. They eventually persuaded Warner Bros. to invest in the film by cutting its production budget in almost half (Fabrikant 1990). The movie was produced for $7.5 million and eventually earned over $106 million at the box office (The Numbers 2019). In 2005, the surprise hit of the year was March of the Penguins, a French documentary about the emperor penguins of Antarctica that was narrated by Morgan Freeman. Mark Gill, the President of Warner Independent Pictures, bought the film for the US market after seeing the original French version at the Sundance Film Festival. At the time, Premiere magazine questioned this purchase, stating, “What was Mark Gill thinking when he paid a million dollars for a French documentary about a bunch of Penguins?” (Blair 2005). The film earned over $77 million domestically and remains the second-highest grossing documentary behind Fahrenheit 9/11 (Box Office Mojo 2019). Richard Zanuck was the producer for Driving Miss Daisy (1989) and is also known for Deep Impact (1998) and Jaws (1975) (IMDb 2019). Said Zanuck, “That’s the truth of it and that’s the kind of business it is. With Jaws, not until the first screening, when the audience went absolutely berserk, the screaming when Roy says, ‘You’re going to need a bigger boat,’ that Steven and I and David, we all gripped each other, ‘We got it.’ That big dumb, stupid, mechanical shark is working” (Couturié 2006). Added George Clooney, an award-winning actor and filmmaker, “There’s so many ways to screw this up. You start with a great script, the director screws it up, an actor gives a bad performance, the editor screws up … So, to me, when it works. It’s a miracle. So, yeah, it is catching lightning in a bottle. It is controlled luck” (Couturié 2006).

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Penny Marshall was an award-winning actress, director and producer who first gained recognition for her role as Laverne DeFazio on the television show Laverne & Shirley (1976–1983). She became the first woman to direct a film that grossed $100 million with Big in 1988. She would surpass that threshold again in 1992 with A League of Their Own (Dunham 2018). She summed up this issue perfectly by saying, “If there was a rule to make a successful movie, don’t you think every movie would be successful?” (Couturié 2006). The role of uncertainty was also addressed in a story shared by Richard Zanuck about the production of the movie Jaws (1975). He said that it was because the mechanical shark wasn’t working that they had to shoot the movie the way they did. For example, instead of using the shark in the opening scene, they were forced to show the woman being dragged by the shark on the surface of the water. He claimed that the movie wouldn’t have been nearly as effective by showing the shark so early in the movie, even with today’s digital technology (Couturié 2006). Jaws was widely considered to be the first summer blockbuster. This is mostly due to its box office success. For instance, the movie grossed $7,061,513 on its opening weekend and sold 25 million tickets in its first 38 days. However, the movie largely followed a release strategy that was earlier developed by Warner Brothers studios (Hayes and Bing 2004). The producers, directors and actors were then asked whether they believed William Goldman’s statement that, “Nobody knows anything,” was true. In response, Morgan Freeman said, “I think Goldman’s absolutely right. Nobody knows anything” (Couturié 2006). However, according to Tom Rothman, “I don’t really believe that ‘nobody knows anything.’ I think we know something.” Brian Glazer qualified the statement by saying, “It’s true that no one knows whether something is going to be successful.” As did Sydney Pollack, who said, “Nobody knows anything definitively” (Couturié 2006). As of this writing in 2019,  Alan Horn serves as the Chief Creative Officer and Co-Chairman of Walt Disney Studios. However, when he was interviewed for the movie Boffo!, he was the Chief Operating Officer of Warner Bros. Previously, he co-founded Castle Rock and as Chairman oversaw such acclaimed movies as A Few Good Men (1992), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), The Green Mile (1999) and When Harry Met Sally  (1989) and the incredibly successful television show Seinfeld (1989–1998) (Walt Disney Company 2019). Of Goldman’s assertion, he stated, “I think it’s in many respects still very true” (Couturié 2006).

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Said Richard Zanuck, “Bill Goldman was right when he said, ‘Nobody knows anything.’” And, Peter Guber stated, “Yeah but you try to hire people that you think know something” (Couturié 2006). George Clooney echoed the sentiment, “Nobody knows anything.” While Penny Marshall also agreed, stating, “William Goldman was absolutely right when he said, ‘Nobody knows nothing’ because they don’t” (Couturié 2006). After that bleak assessment, there is some good news since there is a way to mitigate this risk. This is primarily done through the use of big data and conducting a financial analysis. For this discussion, I turned again to Bruce Nash of Nash Information Services, LLC, the movie finance and statistics expert we met in the previous chapter. As stated earlier, his company operates The Numbers website (www.the-numbers.com), which is the most comprehensive online database of financial information about the movies and a monthly destination for over 500,000 industry professionals and movie fans. They also provide consulting services to mostly independent filmmakers to help them develop business plans for potential investors. Their other clients consist of studios, Wall Street investment firms and technology companies seeking data on trends in the industry. I asked Bruce whether having a proven product or a known quantity was the reason that Hollywood tends to make the same film over and over again. He said that the answer was yes for two reasons. First, he said that studios really only want to make films that are based on existing brands such as remaking a film that’s already been made, or one that is based on a franchise or a comic book for example. Also, he said that most original content is being produced through independent films. If the studios do it, he said it will be through a really well-established director such as Stephen Spielberg, Christopher Nolan or Peter Jackson, or it will be through a really well-established cast (Nash 2019). I next asked Bruce what the percentage was of studios and independent films losing money or breaking even versus those that are profitable. He stated that on the studio side it’s about a 50/50 chance. So, his theory is that at the point at which the studio sees a movie as being a coin flip, they will flip the coin. For independent films, he said it’s likely that 80 percent lose money (Nash 2019). I then asked if the disparity between studio films and independent films was because of the different types of movies they produce, a lack of distribution by independent films or other market factors. He said it was a

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combination of all of the above because the deck was just stacked against you compared to the market position of the studios (Nash 2019). However, he said, “If you look across the independent film space in its entirety, what you’ll likely find is that it’s profitable. Unfortunately, it’s so skewed towards one end. That is, 20 percent of profitable movies are very profitable and, of films that are profitable, 20 percent of those are extremely profitable” (Nash 2019). He said it’s films like The King’s Speech that go out and make over $400 million worldwide that makes up for a lot of duds. So, as an independent producer, if you can keep doing it, and you can make 20, 30 or 40 films through your career, you will almost certainly produce a movie that does well and offsets your losses. But if you put all of your eggs in one basket, you’ll probably be disappointed (Nash 2019). To that end, one of the services that Bruce’s company offers is a comp analysis. This is based on researching “comparables” or movies with similar qualities to generate revenue estimates. For instance, if you wanted to know how previous horror movies fared, they would provide you with a customized profit and loss model for movies that match your project’s type (Nash 2019). Bruce said that they usually provide 20 films in their comp analysis because it provides enough data for reasonable statistical validity. I asked if there were any numbers in particular that filmmakers should analyze. He responded that since most of these reports were used for investors, they really want to know the return on investment of the project, what the range of the results might be and when investors will get their money back (Nash 2019). He stated, “This should really be the tool that somebody is using to make business decisions about their film. Because when you think about the process of making a film, it’s really dozens or even hundreds of different negotiations that you’re having with the director, actors, screenwriters and distributors, and making decisions about whether to play at certain festivals. All of these things ultimately come back to the value of the project and determine the market for your film” (Nash 2019). The Numbers website provides figures on production budgets as well as daily and weekly box office revenue. However, it doesn’t offer estimates on marketing expenditures. Therefore, I asked Bruce if there was a rule of thumb for estimating the marketing budgets for films. He responded, “A good rule of thumb for studio movies is roughly the equivalent of the production budget. Although, for independent films, it comes down to what type of distribution you’re getting. Our model is

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based on what we call theatrical engagements which includes the number of theaters and the number of weeks a movie is shown. So, if you’re in 10 theaters for 10 weeks, that is 100 theatrical engagements and that is sort of the equivalent to 100 theaters for one week or one theater for 100 weeks. This will give us a good idea of how much is being spent on marketing” (Nash 2019). Bruce also said that in the comp analysis reports that they provide there is significant variability in their estimates. In fact, these numbers can be +/− 30 percent for studio films and +/− 50 percent for independent films. However, this variability is typically evident in the comps that they provide given the range that exists between low performers and high performers. For independent movies, they typically say that the estimates could be between half and double. So, a film that is estimated to earn $10 million could earn as little as $5 million or as much as $20 million (Nash 2019). I also queried Bruce about their Bankability Index which estimates how much value someone adds to a film. This is based on a proprietary method they developed which includes a network of over 150,000 people and 7 million connections. This index utilizes an analytical technique called graph analysis and measures the influence of each person in their Hollywood Creative Graph. This graph represents all of the films that people both in front of the camera and behind the camera have worked on together (Nash 2019). The top 50 is usually dominated by actors and actresses but includes producers and directors as well. At the top of this list as of October 2019 was Tom Cruise with an estimated value per film of $22,437,450. Will Smith was number two at $21,131,474, who had seen a recent boost from Aladdin (The Numbers 2019). Said Bruce, “This number is likely what these actors and actresses ask for. Someone like Tom Cruise may get more for a well-established franchise like Mission Impossible but we found that this largely correlates with what they’re probably charging. This is based on what is commonly reported in the press at the top end. On the lower end, we typically provide reports for independent filmmakers who are trying to estimate the value of less well-established actors and actresses” (Nash 2019). In addition, he said there are really two ways of looking at the data. For instance, on one hand, you can argue that people like Kathleen Kennedy, who has an estimated value per movie of $16,623,412, is probably worth that to the film but likely isn’t being paid that much money. On the other hand, there probably are some roles down the list whose value is

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overinflated. That is, is a certain costume designer or line producer worth their estimated value or is it because they just happened to work on the last several Marvel movies? (Nash 2019). Therefore, there is also a challenge in using this data from a predictive standpoint. For example, he asked whether the fact that John Williams produces a score is predictive of a movie’s outcome since he is number 16 on the list. As a result, Bruce said that they may create both a predictive model and a salary model from the data (Nash 2019).

References Blair, Elizabeth. 2005. ‘March of the Penguins’ a Box Office Surprise. NPR, October 31. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story. php?storyId=4982232 Box Office Mojo. 2019. Retrieved from http://www.boxofficemojo.com Couturié, Bill. 2006. Boffo! Tinseltown’s Bombs & Blockbusters. HBO Documentary Film, November 14. Dunham, Will. 2018. Penny Marshall, ‘Big’ director and TV’s ‘Laverne,’ dead at 75. Reuters, December 18. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/ us-people-penny-marshall/penny-marshall-big-director-and-tvs-laverne-deadat-75-media-idUSKBN1OH25Z Fabrikant, Geraldine. 1990. The New York Times, March 6. Retrieved from https:// www.nytimes.com/1990/03/06/business/how-major-studios-missed-a-hit.html Goldman, William. 1989. Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting. New York: Grand Central Publishing. Hayes, Dade, and Jonathan Bing. 2004. Open Wide: How Hollywood Box Office Became a National Obsession. New York: Miramax Books. IMDb. 2019. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com Nash, Bruce. 2019. Interview by Owen Eagan. September 30. Obias, Rudie. 2015. 11 Beloved Movies That Were Box Office Flops. Mental Floss. November 10. Retrieved from http://mentalfloss.com/article/59990/11beloved-movies-were-box-office-flops Schager, Nick. 2016. Frank Darabont on His ‘Bizarre and Wonderful’ ‘Shawshank Redemption’ Experience, and the ‘Mean’ Ending to ‘The Mist.’ Yahoo! Entertainment. September 23. Retrieved from https://www.yahoo.com/ entertainment/frank-darabont-on-his-bizarre-and-wonderful-shawshankredemption-experience-and-the-mean-ending-to-the-mist-222239696.html Sony Pictures. 2019. Retrieved from https://www.sonypictures.com/corp/ seniormanagementteam/tomrothman.html The Numbers. 2019. Retrieved from http://www.the-numbers.com The Walt Disney Company. 2019. Alan F. Horn, Co-Chairman and Chief Creative Officer, The Walt Disney Studios. Retrieved from https://www.thewaltdisneycompany.com/leaders/alan-f-horn/

CHAPTER 4

Film Festivals

Abstract  This chapter consists of interviews with the program directors of several film festivals in the United States to determine the value of film festivals and what makes them unique. It also explores the predictive nature of the major film festivals on the Academy Award for Best Picture. Additionally, it discusses what percentage of films will actually get a theatrical release including genres and original screenplays. Keywords  Movies • Film festivals • Jury award • Audience award • Predictability • Emerson College Film festivals originally began in Venice in 1932 as part of a biannual art, dance and theater exposition. Shortly thereafter, other influential film festivals began, including the Cannes International Film Festival in 1946, the Berlin International Film Festival in 1951, the Toronto International Film Festival in 1976 and the Sundance Film Festival in 1978. According to the Motion Picture Association of America, there are nearly 4000 film festivals held around the world each year (Motion Picture Association 2012). One of those film festivals is held in Mendocino, California. Mendocino is a coastal community three and half hours north of San Francisco and the journey up the Pacific Coast Highway is as scenic as the town itself. As you arrive, you’re sure to be captivated by its lighthouses and seaside inns. Once a logging community, the town is now an art enclave with a quaint downtown. © The Author(s) 2020 O. Eagan, Oscar Buzz and the Influence of Word of Mouth on Movie Success, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41180-0_4

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The Mendocino Film Festival was founded with the assistance of the Oscar-winning director, producer and actor Sydney Pollack in 2006. At the inaugural event, he emphasized the need for film festivals by saying that the conglomerates were only interested in making repeatable products and that they stifled creativity by making the same types of movies (Hartzell 2006). He added, “That is why you start a festival like this. What you are encouraging is alternative choices to mainstream filmmaking, which has become cookie cutter. One of the great things about film festivals is that they do encourage work that is not the 27th copy of something, not the fifth sequel” (Hartzell 2006). Film festivals have many other benefits as well. In 2019, Claudia Puig, the Program Director for the Mendocino Film Festival, wrote a letter to attendees in which she recognized the ability of film to strengthen communities. She wrote, “Through film we recognize our common global existence and better understand and empathize with others as we begin to see the depth of their experiences, as well as the obstacles they may face – whether literal walls or psychological and cultural barriers. Great films illuminate and elucidate, and, in the process, encourage compassion. In the best cases, they can transform us.” Claudia also serves as the Program Director for Film Fest 919 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This festival began in October 2018 and was founded by Randi Emerman and Carol Marshall, who worked together for 15 years at the Palm Beach International Film Festival (Erbland 2017). Like Mendocino, Chapel Hill is also a beautiful community but has a different character. It is a quintessential college town as it is home to the University of North Carolina. Through my interview with her, she said she was drawn to this work because of her love for films and the many years spent as a film critic, which makes a curator/programmer’s job a natural progression. She had also attended many film festivals for her work and served on many film festival juries and closely watched how the festivals functioned (Puig 2019). In addition to her film festival responsibilities, Claudia is the president of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, a critic on NPR’s Film Week, a college instructor and a film consultant. Previously, she was USA Today’s film critic for 15  years, during which she also hosted “The Screening Room” video series and conducted live interviews on the red carpet at the Oscars, Golden Globes and Independent Spirit Awards. Before then, she was a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times for 11 years (Puig 2019).

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I asked Claudia what the missions were of each of the film festivals she programs. She responded, “The Mendocino Film Festival is particularly focused on social and political issues, ecology, conservation and music. Consequently, we show a lot of documentaries and films that serve these interests and host live musical programs along with films. It’s a generally older, progressive, well-educated community so I program the event accordingly (Puig 2019). “The audience for the film festival in North Carolina is also well-­ educated and film-loving, though their tastes may be broader. However, we only program narrative films since there is already a long-running, popular documentary festival in the area. Also, part of that festival’s mission is to shine a spotlight on screenwriters and authors on whose work many films are based” (Puig 2019). She said that both of these festivals are small regional events with small staffs so, as the program director, she is the final arbiter of what films are shown. In Mendocino, she has two other programming associates that watch the films and they discuss them extensively. They also have a couple of  screeners who go through their film submissions on Film Freeway, a leading submission site for film festivals around the world. In North Carolina, she doesn’t have a programming staff since its only their second year but she regularly discusses the films she chooses with the two festival directors, who watch quite a few of the films they program (Puig 2019). Claudia indicated that they show a total of 42 feature-length films and 12 short films each year in Mendocino, and 36 films each year in North Carolina. She said that their attendees decide which movies to see based on advance buzz, the descriptions in the program and online, and also from hearing the key festival staff interviewed on local radio programs and in local newspaper articles (Puig 2019). I shared the results of a study we conducted at Emerson College that found that the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is the most predictive among the major film festivals, primarily because of the way that they are chosen. We’ll elaborate on this study further at the end of this chapter. In light of these results, I asked her whether her film festivals had any predictive qualities. She agreed that the TIFF is definitely the most predictive and said, “At the Mendocino Film Festival, they have both jury awards and audience awards for narratives and documentaries, while in North Carolina they only have an audience award. In general, the audience’s reaction to movies in North Carolina has a predictive quality, but not their audience

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winners so far. Last year we opened with Roma and closed with Green Book, and audiences were big fans of both. Our audience prize winner, however, was Capernaum, a wonderfully moving Lebanese film” (Puig 2019). She said that because the Mendocino Film Festival is held in late May and early June, it tended not to be as predictive because it is just after the awards season. The North Carolina festival, on the other hand, is held in October and many people in the industry see the fall as the official launch of Oscar season (Puig 2019). I asked her about some of the most successful films at her festivals. She said that, according to audience response, in Mendocino they were Rumble, David Crosby: Remember My Name, Pavarotti and Amazing Grace, which were all music documentaries. In North Carolina, the most successful films they have shown were Roma and Green Book (Puig 2019). In response to my question about what made them so successful, Claudia said, “In Mendocino’s case, it was their musical themes. For North Carolina, it was the films themselves and the fact that the cast and filmmakers were on hand to support the film” (Puig 2019). When asked about the role film festivals play in promoting diversity, Claudia stated that they all play a role but others such as TIFF and Sundance have a disproportionate influence. For her part, with smaller regional fests, she always makes it a point to show films from a wide array of countries, covering a wide spectrum of topics, storylines and perspectives by diverse filmmakers (Puig 2019). For instance, she stated, “Half of the films I programmed at Mendocino this year were by women, POC and LGBT filmmakers. It is something I feel very strongly about, as I also teach a college class on Diversity in the Media and serve as a diversity/cultural consultant for Amblin Productions and Amazon TV” (Puig 2019). For an additional perspective on the importance of film festivals, I consulted my longtime friend Judy Laster, the Founder and Executive Director of the Woods Hole Film Festival. Woods Hole is nestled on the ocean in Falmouth, Massachusetts, and from there it is about a 45-minute ferry ride to Martha’s Vineyard. It is also home to several world-renowned marine science institutions including the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Marine Biological Laboratory, the Woods Hole Research Center and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

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Judy started the film festival in 1991 when the world of film festivals was in its infancy. She said that, initially, she was attracted to do this because she had made a short film and wanted to screen it for her friends. As a result, she and a friend put together a one-hour program of five short films and the Woods Hole Film Festival was launched. It has grown organically and remained a community-based festival with a global reach. She remains attracted to the film festival because it’s always interesting and exciting and it is a joy to connect filmmakers and audiences (Laster 2019). Judy stated, “Film festivals matter even more now than they did in 1991. As the world has changed, independent film remains a place where people learn, see new stories, connect and broaden their view of the world and their ability to affect change” (Laster 2019). In particular, she said, “As the studio system is focused on tent pole films and big brands, small stories are losing their ability to find their audience in the theatrical space. And, although streaming services provide an opportunity for people to see films, the way they see them is the antithesis of community and a shared experience” (Laster 2019). She added that the Woods Hole Film Festival plays a unique role in the film festival circuit. Its mission is to support the work of emerging independent filmmakers, to create a place for independent film on Cape Cod and show the work of New England filmmakers. Moreover, the film festival is unique due to its location, the scientific and academic community comprised of people who come there from around the globe and the support it receives from the community (Laster 2019). To accommodate the 170 films they screen  a year, they utilize many local businesses and organizations as venues. For instance, its venues range from intimate settings like the Old Woods Hole Fire Station to the auditorium at the Marine Biological Laboratory (Hugus 2016). According to Judy, the festival has programmers for the different film sections and they select the films based on the reviews of the screening committee. They also think about the films in the context of the overall program (Laster 2019). Given the number of films they exhibit, I asked Judy how people decide which films to see. She said that they make decisions in multiple ways such as through the subject matter, the program guide and word of mouth from friends and family (Laster 2019). The festival has both a jury and audience award. Their most prominent award, the Best of the Festival, is determined by the audience through ballots. I then asked Judy how predictive her festival’s awards were for other

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awards. She said that they have a predictive value for the Independent Spirit Awards and the Gotham Awards, but are not very predictive for the Oscars (Laster 2019). Next, I spoke with Eric Moore, the Programming Manager for the American Film Institute’s festivals and a fellow alumnus from Emerson College. Eric has a deep history at festivals, having been a manager and/ or department head at AFI, LA Film Festival, Palm Springs International Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival, and has screened at a number of other festivals, too. He also helped found, produce and program the Tallgrass Film Festival in Wichita, Kansas, which turned 17 this year (Moore 2019). He said that he fell into the work a bit. The short version of the story is that after a horrible internship with a B-movie production company which made action films for the European market, he was offered an internship at LA Film Fest. He walked in the doors and saw a diverse workplace, the antithesis to the middle-aged white male office he had come from. He interviewed with a tall gay Native American man and a Maori American woman, who both became close friends. He took the internship not because he knew much about film festivals or independent film exhibition, but because it felt like a way better and more complementary option for his final school semester in LA.  It ended up being a perfect fit for him (Moore 2019). Eric said, “As a student, I obviously enjoyed making collaborative projects, but my main objective was to help share voices that weren’t getting heard. A film festival is an amazing place for new voices to be given a platform and curating a festival is a privilege. The programmers use their expertise of understanding the past, present, and near future of film, listening to the interests and needs of their audiences, and paying attention to themes and topics important to the zeitgeist” (Moore 2019). According to Eric, “Each film is selected for a reason and helps create an overall narrative for a year’s slate. Ideally, each selection starts or engages conversations that need to be had. Connecting those films and their filmmakers to the public is one of the most satisfying aspects of the job, since you get to see how your choices in programming can affect the lives of people through the films. This is why I’m so attracted to this work” (Moore 2019). I then asked him why film festivals play this role. He believes that Hollywood studios are not likely to take the economic risks on films with minority representation and unheard voices. In his opinion, this was based

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on fear and not substantiated data. When marginalized voices and non-­ straight-­ white privileged narratives are allowed to be presented with proper public relations, marketing and outreach, the audiences are eager for the content (Moore 2019). He emphasized that representation and being heard matters. He said that films can be entertaining and they can also be empowering and revolutionary. Film festivals are important to show these sorts of projects. Many festival films (especially at smaller festivals) will not get major, if any, distribution. This is their chance to be seen. Some of the most successful screenings he has seen are for films that never went far but connected the filmmakers to an audience who was starved for these stories. Festivals are also an incubator for new talent to get a start and have the power to fuel the future of storytelling (Moore 2019). Eric said that AFI FEST is the longest-running international film festival in Los Angeles and its mission is to serve as “a showcase for the best festival films of the year, and an opportunity for artists to come together with audiences in the heart of the movie capital of the world.” In addition, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognizes AFI FEST as a qualifying festival for both Short Films categories of the annual Academy Awards— a tradition that continues each year (Moore 2019). He said other features of the festival currently include their New Auteurs program which is designed exclusively to raise the profiles of first or second-time feature filmmakers. This section offers a launch pad for new voices eligible for prizes awarded by an esteemed jury of critics, writers and editors from the film community. Also, the festival’s World Cinema section features discussions with veteran world auteurs and screenings of their latest work (Moore 2019). I asked Eric what made the AFI FEST unique and he responded by saying it was mostly defined by their place on the calendar. That is, while they host many Los Angeles, North American and world premieres, they also showcase the best of the films from festivals around the world. He added that because their festival is at the end of the year, they are not attempting to be a discovery festival for the most part. This provides their audiences with an amazing opportunity to see films that have had major buzz around the world, and also ones that are special and might get missed in the US (Moore 2019). To determine this mix, he said that they solicit films in a number of ways. They have open submissions that are processed using Film Freeway. They also go in search of films by going to film festivals around the world and country, and tracking films accepted to other festivals (Moore 2019).

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This year they have about 4500 films under consideration. They have a requirement that films must be completed after August 1st of the previous year. They must also be LA premieres for the features. Each year, the festival shows approximately 110–130 films, which consists of 40–50 short films and includes episodic content (Moore 2019). In 2018, the complete AFI FEST program included 135 titles (84 features, 47 shorts and four episodic content), representing 45 countries, including 65 films directed by women, 29 documentaries and nine animated films. This year’s program includes nine official Best Foreign Language Film Oscar submissions, and 24 films featuring 52 AFI Conservatory alumni credits. The AFI Conservatory is a non-profit graduate school in the Hollywood Hills operated by the institute (Moore 2019). With so many films offered at their festival, I asked Eric how people navigate their program. He said that it was based on a combination of factors. First, there are festival usuals. These are the people who come out every year. They are the cinephiles who scour the program as soon as it comes out. Many of them have types of films they look for and choose based on those descriptions (Moore 2019). Next are participating member organizations. Certain films, or blocks of films, are linked with certain organizations which are applicable to them. For example, he said they may have partnerships with certain consulates or organizations representing certain communities or causes. They will communicate with their members and those individuals will most likely only see the specific films targeted toward them. Some will discover the festival this way and see other films. Some come back year after year (Moore 2019). Then there are other target groups. If there is not a direct partnership, there is still outreach to various applicable communities. For example, one year they had an Armenian film at LA Film Fest when he was there. The film was given a good amount of press in the Armenian newspapers, TV, and such, and was packed so much that they had to turn people away. He said that this was a good example of the power of outreach. Certain communities are not as energized, but knowing your target audiences is valuable (Moore 2019). Another group consists of sponsor invitees. Sponsors of the festival get tickets and/or passes at different levels based on their level of support. So, a portion of the seats are filled by people associated with those organizations and companies. If a sponsor is supporting a specific film, that is

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­ bviously the deciding factor of why a person chose to see that film o (Moore 2019). Other people are attracted to the festival through signage and media impressions. Street signage, ads in papers, sometimes mini programs printed in a local paper are how some hear and discover the festivals. These also include Facebook ads and other social and digital media outreach (Moore 2019). Some attendance, he said, is the result of their venue. The festival is at the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, so there are tons of people walking by who might get curious, pick up a program and decide to see something that has tickets still available (Moore 2019). Because the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognizes AFI FEST as a qualifying festival for both Short Films categories of the annual Academy Awards, Eric said that the festival uses a jury of industry professionals to scrutinize which films merit recognition. Last year, he said the Shorts section featured 47 films from filmmakers from all over the world, showcasing their distinct international viewpoints. As the only juried section of the festival, the Grand Jury Award winners for Live Action and Animated Short are eligible for the Best Live Action Short and Best Animated Short Academy Awards (Moore 2019). However, they also ballot most films for the audience awards—one for best feature and one for best short. I asked Eric if any of their awards had a predictive quality. He responded, “For AFI, this is not really a fair question since our festival is a culled selection of the top films from around the world. Many of our international films are the official Oscar submissions from certain countries. Every year there are films we show that win major awards but we have already sifted them from the international film scene to find the films that we feel are the most successful, important, and unique. If award committees and voters are doing their jobs, often times these movies will be similar, if not the same” (Moore 2019). Eric struggled with defining the most successful films they’ve shown but did say there were festival darlings. He said this could be due to the buzz they’ve already had throughout the year or perhaps a celebrity was involved. Sometimes you end up with something incredibly topical. This has happened when news breaks about something and you happen to have a film related to it already programmed. This helps leverage publicity for those films (Moore 2019).

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Said Eric, “Our audience awards are weighted based on a percentage of the screening audience and not the total number of votes a film receives. Therefore, the audience award will sometimes end up going to a small film that did not have a full house but which really connected with people. You might have a gut feeling about these, but other times they come as surprises” (Moore 2019). He added, “I also think that films that have filmmakers in attendance are often the most successful. Connecting the audiences with the filmmaker increases engagement and connection to a film. These are often audience winners, and are the ones people tend to talk about for years” (Moore 2019). In light of the importance of film festivals, we wanted to evaluate the influence of some of the major ones. To that end, we conducted a study as part of a School of Communication research course at Emerson College to assess the predictive value of five of the major film festivals for the Academy Award for Best Picture. They included the Berlin International Film Festival, the Cannes Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival. Our study found that the Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award was by far the best indicator of success. Specifically, our research revealed that 41.5% of the People’s Choice Award winners were nominated for Best Picture and that 12.2% won for Best Picture. By comparison, the percentage of Best Picture nominees among other film festival award winners were the Cannes Film Festival at 15.1%, the Sundance Film Festival at 11.4%, the Berlin International Film Festival at 7.9% and the Venice Film Festival at 2.7%. In addition, the Sundance winner has never been a Best Picture winner while the Berlin, Cannes and Venice film festivals all had similar percentages at 1.6%, 1.4% and 1.4%, respectively (see Fig. 4.1). The People’s Choice Award is determined by thousands of audience members who attend the Toronto festival which is in stark contrast to the expert juries that decide the primary awards for the other festivals. We found that the difference between these results was most likely due to the different missions, programs and processes of the festivals. However, we also found that Toronto’s results were also likely evidence of the wisdom of crowds. This concept was popularized by James Surowiecki in his 2004 book, The Wisdom of Crowds, and argues that large groups of people are collectively smarter than individual experts when it comes to problem solving, decision making, innovating and predicting (Surowiecki 2005).

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Berlin

Cannes

Sundance

Best Picture Nominee

Toronto

1.4%

2.7%

12.2% 0.0%

1.4%

11.4%

15.1% 1.6%

7.9%

41.5%

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Venice

Best Picture Winner

Fig. 4.1  Film festival awards

Surowiecki uses a number of examples to illustrate this phenomenon. His book begins with a story about Sir Francis Galton, the English scientist and statistician. In 1906, Galton attended the annual West of England Fat Stock and Poultry Exhibition. While at the fair, he discovered a competition in which people guessed the weight of an ox after it was slaughtered and dressed (Surowiecki 2005). Galton was interested in how the average competitor had performed so, at the end of the competition, he gathered all 787 estimates. He then added all the estimates and calculated their mean, which represented the collective wisdom of the group. He believed that the average guess would be way off the mark due to the involvement of some people who were very smart and some who weren’t. He discovered that the average estimate was 1197 pounds. To his surprise, the actual weight of the ox was 1198 pounds (Surowiecki 2005). As another example, Surowiecki used the popular game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The game consists of a series of multiple-choice questions which progressively get more difficult. However, if at any point the contestant is uncertain of an answer, she is given three ways to seek assistance (Surowiecki 2005). The first option consists of having two of the four multiple choice answers removed, which would give her a fifty percent chance of getting the answer right. The second was calling a friend who she identified before the show as being one of the smartest people she knew. And, the third was polling the audience whose results were aggregated for each answer (Surowiecki 2005).

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Conventional wisdom suggests that the “expert” would likely always be the best option. Although, while they performed well, the experts were right only 65 percent of the time. On the other hand, the audience’s accuracy rate was 91 percent. Surowiecki acknowledges that the results of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? would not withstand scientific scrutiny. Yet, he argues it provides a good example of collective intelligence (Surowiecki 2005). The Hamptons International Film Festival was also evaluated because it includes both a jury and audience award for Best Narrative Feature. Since the festival’s founding in 1993, none of the jury awards have been nominated for Best Picture, whereas 22.2 percent of the audience awards have been nominated including 77.8 percent of them in the last nine years. Along with the wisdom of crowds, the curation of the films is important as well. For instance, Anne Chaisson, the Executive Director of the Hamptons International Film Festival, says that they focus less on world premieres and more on carefully curating films from international festivals (Gottlieb 2018). Moreover, film festivals can be predictive even without awards. That is, the Telluride Film Festival, held every year in Telluride, Colorado, doesn’t offer any awards for the films that they screen. Yet, they are consistently seen as one of the best bellwethers for predicting the Academy Award for Best Picture. This is due to a few reasons. First, like the Hamptons International Film Festival, it’s largely the result of the movies that they choose to screen. These decisions are primarily made by Julie Huntsinger, the festival’s Executive Director, who has been referred to as the most influential woman in Hollywood that no one has ever heard of. Though she emphatically states that they don’t care about the Oscars, the Oscars apparently really care about them as many Best Picture winners have screened there over the years (Keegan 2017). Second, the festival attracts a large number of Oscar voters. Therefore, listening to what Academy members are saying and gauging the audience reactions to the films is very telling. As a result, reading the reviews of critics who attend the event can be a good source of early indicators (Hammond 2019). As an aside, it is worth noting that there are caveats to the predictive value of audience awards. For example, the Sundance Film Festival also offers an audience award but these awards were found to be less predictive than its jury award. This was believed to be the result of the unique mission of the Sundance festival which is to promote independent films and artists whereas Toronto’s mission is “to transform the way people see the

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world through film.” That said, Sundance has been extremely influential in launching successful films and careers and, like the other festivals, is true to its mission. In addition, we explored the extent to which these festivals were used as a platform to promote these films. To that end, we discovered that many films either premiered or were shown at these festivals despite their predictive ability (see Fig. 4.2). Our findings relative to the predictive value of major film festivals provide another example of how large groups of people can make better decisions than small groups of experts under the right conditions which include diversity, independence and decentralization. Therefore, this helps us understand why some film festivals have more predictive value than others while considering their unique characteristics. We found that these results were similar to the collective opinions used by prediction markets such as the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX), which has been known to be an accurate predictor of movie outcomes. The HSX allows users to wager simulated money on the box office performance of films as well as Oscar nominees and winners. Nevertheless, film festivals primarily offer a variety of benefits including their ability to promote diversity, engender compassion and foster creativity. However, if you want to use film festivals as a barometer for an Academy Award for Best Picture, the best way is to analyze their mission, movies and audiences as well as how their awards are determined. Although, before you undertake this task, it’s worth noting that many independent films are not afforded a theatrical release. A study conducted

Fig. 4.2  Premiered or shown

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by Stephen Follows and Bruce Nash of all independent narrative feature films produced in the United States in 2017 found that 40 percent of them didn’t get a theatrical release. Moreover, it was found that 35 percent of them had only a nominal release. No box office figures were reported for these films so they were likely shown in only one or two theaters (Follows and Nash 2019). The authors also discovered that genre plays a significant role in determining whether a film is released. For instance, the ones least likely to be released in theaters are those they classified as adventure films. Specifically, 71 percent of these movies never played in theaters. The next least likely to play in theaters were action (51 percent) and horror films (47 percent). Among the nominal, small and large releases, dramas, comedies and thrillers fared much better (Follows and Nash 2019). Additionally, the authors analyzed whether having a pre-existing audience correlated with a theatrical release. In general, they found that about half of studio-produced films were based on adaptations. By comparison, only 24 percent of the independent films in their sample utilized pre-­ existing material. However, they found that these films were three times as likely to secure a large theatrical release than those with original screenplays (Follows and Nash 2019).

References Erbland, Kate. 2017. Former USA Today Film Critic Claudia Puig Sets Sights on New North Carolina Film Festival. IndieWire, October 5. Retrieved from https://www.indiewire.com/2017/10/usa-today-film-critic-claudia-puignorth-carolina-film-festival-1201884188/ Follows, Stephen, and Bruce Nash. 2019. How Many Independent Films Get a Theatrical Release? American Film Market. Retrieved from https://americanfilmmarket.com/how-many-independent-films-get-a-theatrical-release/ Gottlieb, Akiva. 2018. Hamptons International Film Festival Boasts Oscar Hopefuls, October 2. Retrieved from https://variety.com/2018/film/festivals/ hamptons-international-film-festival-oscar-hopefuls-1202961629/ Hammond, Pete. 2019. Oscar Race Gets Rolling In The Rockies From ‘A’ (Adams, Driver and Sandler) To ‘Z’ (Zellweger)  – Telluride Film Festival. Deadline Hollywood, September 2. Retrieved from https://deadline.com/2019/09/ oscar-race-adam-driver-renee-zellweger-telluride-1202709211/ Hartzell, Frank. 2006. Big Names, High Energy Boost Mendocino Film Festival Opening. Fort Bragg Advocate-News, May 25. Retrieved from https://www. advocate-news.com/2006/05/25/big-names-high-energy-boost-mendocinofilm-festival-opening/

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Hugus, Elise. 2016. Weekend Retreat at Woods Hole Film Festival: Want an Idyllic Small-Town Getaway? Look No Further. MovieMaker, September 23. Retrieved from https://www.moviemaker.com/archives/festivals/woods-holefilm-festival-small-town-getaway/ Keegan, Rebecca. 2017. This Woman Is the Most Important Hollywood Tastemaker You’ve Never Heard Of. Vanity Fair, August 31. Retrieved from https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/08/hollywood-tastemakerjulie-huntsinger-telluride-film-festival Laster, Judy. 2019. Interview by Owen Eagan, August 12. Moore, Eric. 2019. Interview by Owen Eagan, August 30. Motion Picture Association. 2012. Film Festivals Decoder: A Look At The World’s Top Film Fests, September 6. Retrieved from https://www.motionpictures. org/2012/09/film-festivals-decoder-a-look-at-the-worlds-top-film-fests/ Puig, Claudia. 2019. Interview by Owen Eagan. September 17. Surowiecki, James. 2005. The Wisdom of Crowds. New York: Anchor Books.

CHAPTER 5

The Influence of Film Critics

Abstract  This chapter provides an overview of a number of academic studies on the influence of film critics. This includes an Emerson College study which found that film critics have a moderate influence on movies but that most of that influence is negative. Also, another study by the college found that film critics’ moderate influence on movies could have a significant impact on box office revenue. Keywords  Movies • Film critics • Predictors • Influencers • Rotten Tomatoes • Negativity bias • Loss aversion • Emerson College In 2001, movie ads appeared for Sony Pictures Entertainment’s The Animal and A Knight’s Tale that included praise from movie critic David Manning of The Ridgefield Press, a weekly newspaper in Connecticut. Specifically, he was quoted as saying that The Animal was “another winner” and that Heath Ledger of A Knight’s Tale was “this year’s hottest new star” (Associated Press 2001). However, after an inquiry by Newsweek, Sony Pictures Entertainment later admitted that David Manning didn’t exist. Sony said an employee had apparently concocted the fictitious reviews using the name of a friend (Horn 2001). At the time, this story shed light on a process in which movie studios cultivated relationships with movie critics by providing them with free trips, hotels and meals in exchange for positive reviews. For example, Peter © The Author(s) 2020 O. Eagan, Oscar Buzz and the Influence of Word of Mouth on Movie Success, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41180-0_5

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Rainer, then Chairman of the National Society of Film Critics, said critics who were not perceived as being part of the team were marginalized and that there were cadres of critics who would do the bidding of the studios. He added that the Manning incident was a logical extension of this process and that the only mistake the studio made was not creating their own newspaper (Welkos 2001). In the wake of the Manning revelation, the State of Connecticut launched an investigation and Sony agreed to pay $326,000 for the fake reviews (Cosgrove-Mather 2002). So, we know that film critics are thought to be influential. But how influential are they? Many academic studies have been conducted over the years to answer this question. In fact, the majority of them have found that they have a significant impact on this process (Terry et al. 2004). They also found that they can influence movies in different ways. For example, research on the role of film critics has mostly examined the extent to which they serve as influencers or predictors. Influencers are defined as those who influence box office performance in the short term and predictors are defined as those who predict movie outcomes in the long term. This concept was developed by Jehoshua Eliashberg and Steven Shugan in a study they published in 1997 which found that film critics serves as predictors but not influencers. Their sample consisted of box office data for movies released in 1991 and 1992, and critics reviews from Variety magazine. Their results found a correlation between critical reviews and cumulative box office receipts but not with early box office receipts (Eliashberg and Shugan 1997). Despite these findings, other studies have determined that critics play roles as both influencers and predictors. Suman Basuroy, Subimal Chatterjee and S.  Abraham Ravid analyzed critics’ effect on a random sample of films released between 1991 and 1993. They found that both positive and negative reviews were significantly correlated with a movie’s performance within the first eight weeks. Therefore, these findings suggest that critics function as influencers and predictors (Basuroy et al. 2003). Another study by Neil Terry, Michael Butler and De’Arno De’Armond found that a ten percent increase in Rotten Tomatoes scores led to $7.8 million at the box office. Their study included movies released in 2001–2002 and which opened in 25 theaters or eventually reaching 100 theaters. Their results also revealed that critics serve as both influencers and predictors. Although, they argue that they are likely more of the latter than the former (Terry et al. 2004).

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In 2005, David A. Reinstein and Christopher M. Snyder published a study on the influence of the popular film critics Siskel and Ebert. At the time, Siskel and Ebert were arguably the most influential critics given their nationally syndicated television program. Part of their objective was to determine the influence of experts on consumer demand for experience goods. They define these goods as those for which the quality is uncertain prior to consumption (Reinstein and Snyder 2005). Their study used a novel approach based on the timing of reviews. Specifically, they used a difference of differences model to isolate the influence effect from the prediction effect. That is, they took the difference between the positive and negative reviews for movies reviewed during opening weekend and those reviewed thereafter (Reinstein and Snyder 2005). Their findings revealed a weak influence on all of the movies they studied. However, they found that this influence effect varied across categories of movies. In particular, it was strongest for movies with a narrower release and for dramas. And, it was virtually nonexistent for movies with a wider release and for action and comedy films (Reinstein and Snyder 2005). Using Rotten Tomatoes scores, Sangkil Moon, Paul K.  Bergey and Dawn Iacobucci analyzed 246 movies released from May 2003 to October 2005 and found that critics’ reviews could be an important quality signal. In particular, they discovered that critics’ ratings could have a significant effect on opening week revenues. Their findings also suggest that high advertising spending on movies with high ratings maximizes revenue (Moon et al. 2010). In 2017, Hollywood executives were blaming Rotten Tomatoes for having an adverse impact on box office revenue. For example, from May to Labor Day, which usually accounts for about 40 percent of ticket sales, the three largest theater chains lost a combined $4 billion in market value. In fact, at a film festival that year the director and producer Brett Ratner said of Rotten Tomatoes, “I think it’s the destruction of our business.” Ratner’s sentiments were widely but quietly shared by other studio executives out of fear of giving the website more credibility (Barnes 2017). Rotten Tomatoes’ website provides movie ratings based on the percentage of positive reviews a film receives from qualified critics. The ratings are provided in the form of a Tomatometer score. Those with a score of less than 60 percent are referred to as Rotten and those with a score of 60 percent or greater are referred to as Fresh. To qualify as a critic, the company’s website states, “Online critics must have published no less than

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100 reviews across two calendar years at a single, Tomatometer-approved publication” (Rotten Tomatoes 2019). In response to this rising concern, Yves Bergquist, the Director of the Data & Analytics Project at the USC’s Entertainment Technology Center, sought to evaluate the impact of these scores on box office revenue (Wallenstein 2017). He collected box office data from Box Office Mojo for the 150 films that had earned more than $1 million in 2017. He then used a Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient (PMCC) analysis and a regression analysis to determine the strength of the correlation between Rotten Tomatoes scores and box office data. The PMCC measures the relationship between two variables on a scale of −1(which is a 100 percent negative correlation) to 1 (which is a 100 percent positive correlation) (Bergquist 2017). His results found overwhelming evidence of virtually no correlation— either positive or negative—between the two. He also looked at film data since 2000 and, as he wrote in an article on Medium, “Rotten Tomatoes scores have never played a very big role in driving box office performance, either positively or negatively” (Bergquist 2017). All of the aforementioned studies are valid, especially since most of them were peer reviewed. But what does this tell us about the influence of film critics? That is, these studies have found that film critics are both influencers and predictors, that they are influencers but not predictors, that they are predictors but not influencers, that their overall influence is weak but that it varies based on the type of movie, that Rotten Tomatoes scores have an impact, and that Rotten Tomatoes scores don’t have an impact. Like most studies, the answer is that it depends on the methodology. Although, despite the depth and breadth of this research, we felt that there remained a few unanswered questions. For instance, as the Reinstein and Snyder study suggested, critics could have different effects on wide and narrow releases. In addition, a study by the Dutch researchers Gerda Gemser, Martine Van Oostrum and Mark Leenders found that critics reviews had influence effects on art house movies and prediction effects on mainstream movies. While their study found that their effects were due to the number and size of the reviews rather than the nature of the reviews, it suggested a distinction between these audiences (Gemser et al. 2007). Also, previous research has found evidence of the effects of a negativity bias among audiences from negative reviews. For instance, the study by

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Basuroy, Chatterjee and Ravid, found that negative reviews hurt performance more than positive reviews helped (Basuroy et al. 2003). This negativity bias is related to the concept of loss aversion, which means that people have a greater aversion to losses than they have an affinity for gains. Loss aversion was discovered by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in their development of prospect theory. This theory, which was recognized by a Nobel Prize in economics in 2002, found that people didn’t always make rational choices regarding economic decisions. For instance, they sought to explain why someone would drive to a distant store to save money on any inexpensive item but wouldn’t do so for the same discount on an expensive item (Smith 2002). In addition, evidence of loss aversion is all around us. For example, one of the most common investing mistakes consists of investors selling stocks that have increased in value as opposed to those decreasing in value. Professional money managers are susceptible to this practice as well, holding on to depreciating stocks twice as long appreciating stocks (Lehrer 2009). Loss aversion is even apparent in our relationships. Researchers have found that a specific ratio of positive to negative interactions is necessary for partners to find their marriage satisfying. They found that those relationships with a ratio of five positive interactions to one negative interaction were most likely to be stable (Estroff Marano 2003). In light of previous research, we wanted to know how these findings would apply to Rotten Tomatoes scores given their prevalence. That is, we hypothesized that there would likely be influencer effects, prediction effects and evidence of the negativity bias among wide releases but not among limited releases. We thought this for a number of reasons but primarily because of the differences that were shown between these two types of movies in the past and because we thought that the audiences for limited releases were likely more discerning (Eagan 2018). Therefore, we looked at all wide releases and limited releases from 2015 to 2017, which consisted of 1100 movies using data from The Numbers and critics reviews from Rotten Tomatoes. We then used a Pearson’s correlation analysis to compare Rotten Tomatoes scores with a movie’s first weekend gross revenue and its total domestic gross revenue (Eagan 2018). The results of correlation analyses are evaluated on a scale of −1.0 to 1.0, which is the equivalent of −100 percent to 100 percent with negative numbers representing an inverse correlation. Correlation coefficients of −0.5 to −1.0 and 0.5 to 1.0 indicate a strong relationship, −0.3 to −0.5 and 0.3 to 0.5 a moderate relationship, and −0.1 to −0.3 and 0.1 to 0.3 a

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weak relationship. However, this relationship must also be statistically significant with a p value equal to or less than 0.05 to ensure a confidence level of 95 percent or greater (Eagan 2018). We found that, overall, film critics had a moderate influence on wide releases and a slight influence on limited releases for both opening weekend and total revenue. However, in both cases, we found that most of that influence is negative. That is, we found that negative reviews had more of an impact than positive reviews. The results of these analyses are shown in Figs. 5.1 and 5.2 below. These analyses also include the r-squared figures from a regression analysis which demonstrates the degree to which one variable influences another (Eagan 2018). It should be noted that instead of using Rotten Tomatoes’ assessment of “Rotten” for movies with a rating of less than 60 percent and “Fresh” for movies with a rating of 60 percent or greater, we used 80 percent as

Wide Releases Negative Reviews Positive Reviews Limited Releases Negative Reviews Positive Reviews

Correlation .33 .26 .03* .16 .21 .02*

R Squared .11 .07 .001 .03 .04 .0004

* Statistically insignificant

Fig. 5.1  First weekend (revenue per theater)

Wide Releases Negative Reviews Positive Reviews Limited Releases Negative Reviews Positive Reviews

Correlation .37 .29 .12* .14 .15 .03*

* Statistically insignificant

Fig. 5.2  Total domestic gross revenue

R Squared .14 .09 .01 .02 .02 .001

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our threshold to distinguish negative and positive reviews. We did this because there wasn’t much of a difference in our analysis between Rotten Tomatoes’ “Rotten” and “Fresh” scores, and because we felt that 80 percent was likely a more reasonable distinction (Eagan 2018). In addition, we wanted to know what this moderate influence meant in terms of revenue. So, we then used a t-test on box office revenue to determine the difference between the sample means of the negative and positive reviews, and whether they were statistically significant (Eagan 2018). While both wide releases and limited releases were analyzed, only the sample means of the wide releases were found to have a statistically significant difference. For wide releases, we found that the revenue difference between movies with negative and positive reviews was an average of $23 million for opening weekend and $83 million for total revenue. These differences are depicted in Figs. 5.3 and 5.4 below (Eagan 2018). To get a better sense of what these differences mean in terms of the influence of film critics, our regression analysis revealed that negative reviews explain approximately 7 percent and 9 percent of the variability for opening weekend and total revenue based on their r-squared figures. Therefore, the negative reviews of film critics could translate into millions of dollars (Eagan 2018). Despite these findings, previous research has found a variety of seemingly conflicting results. Again, this was not only about the overall ­influence $50,000,000 $40,000,000

$30,000,000 $20,000,000 $10,000,000

$0

Negative Reviews

Fig. 5.3  First weekend mean (wide releases)

Positive Reviews

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$150,000,000

$100,000,000

$50,000,000

$0

Negative Reviews

Positive Reviews

Fig. 5.4  Total domestic gross mean (wide releases)

of film critics but whether they serve as influencers—that is, the degree to which they influence box office performance in the short term and whether they serve as predictors—that is, the degree to which they influence box office performance in the long term. There has even been seemingly conflicting research based on Rotten Tomatoes scores. Some research has found that Rotten Tomatoes scores have an impact and some has found that they don’t. So, do film critics influence movie outcomes? The weight of the evidence seems to suggest that they have a modest influence overall and that they serve as both influencers and predictors but mostly for wide releases. Also, a negativity bias from their reviews likely exists for both types of films. That said, there are several implications for studios and filmmakers. First, research has found that the more uncertainty consumers have about the quality of a product, the more they rely on independent information. As a result, opinion leaders should be engaged early in the process to build momentum and extend the life cycle of movies (Lampel and Shamsie 2000).

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Moreover, Eliashberg and Shugan recommend that movie critics should be consulted in the development stage much like they are for other new products (Eliashberg and Shugan 1997). In fact, the film critic Yolanda Machado tells the story of how she was brought in as a consultant by the producers of “Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse” to ensure that its Latino characters and references were culturally accurate. The movie was subsequently a huge hit and critically acclaimed for its inclusivity (Erazo 2018). Also, as our research has confirmed, negative reviews hurt more than positive reviews help movie revenue. Thus, this should be added incentive for studios and filmmakers to include film critics in their market research. As a caveat, there are some limitations to our research. By focusing on aggregate reviews, it doesn’t assess the influence of individual critics. Therefore, it doesn’t take into consideration that some film critics are more influential than others. Further, many have lamented the process of reducing film criticism to a score as it excludes the nuances of reviews. It also creates pressure for critics to have their views conform to others (Gleiberman 2017). Nonetheless, despite the limitations of each of these studies, there are lessons that can be applied to the influence of experts on other experience goods such as music, books, restaurants, etc.

References Barnes, Brooks. 2017. Attacked by Rotten Tomatoes. The New  York Times, September 7. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/business/media/rotten-tomatoes-box-office.html Basuroy, S., S. Chatterjee, and S. Abraham Ravid (2003). How Critical Are Critical Reviews? The Box Office Effects of Film Critics, Star Power, and Budgets. Journal of Marketing, October. Bergquist, Yves. 2017. Cognitive Hollywood, Part 1: Data Shows Box Office Economics in Turmoil. Medium. September 11. Retrieved from https:// medium.com/vantage/cognitive-hollywood-part-1-data-shows-box-officeeconomics-in-turmoil-411a4b22f858 Cosgrove-Mather, Bootie. 2002. Sony Pays For Fake Reviews. CBS News. March 2. Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sony-pays-forfake-reviews/

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Eagan, Owen. 2018. The Influence of Film Critics on Movie Outcomes. Journal of International Business Disciplines, December. Eliashberg, J., and S.M.  Shugan. 1997. Film Critics: Influencers or Predictors? Journal of Marketing 61: 68–78. Erazo, Vanessa. 2018. What Latino Critics Are Saying About ‘Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse’. Remezcla, December 12. Retrieved from https://remezcla. com/lists/film/latino-critics-review-spider-man-into-spider-verse/ Estroff Marano, Hara. 2003. Our Brain’s Negative Bias: Why Our Brains Are More Highly Attunded to Negative News. Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200306/our-brainsnegative-bias Gemser, Gerda, Martine Van Oostrum, and Mark A.  A. M.  Leenders. 2007. The Impact of Film Reviews on the Box Office Performance of Art House Versus Mainstream Motion Pictures. Journal of Cultural Economics, February. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5149728_The_ impact_of_film_reviews_on_the_box_office_performance_of_art_house_versus_mainstream_motion_pictures Gleiberman, Owen. 2017. Healthy Tomatoes? The Danger of Film Critics Speaking as One. Variety, August 20. Retrieved from https://variety.com/2017/ film/columns/rottentomatoes-the-danger-of-film-critics-speaking-as-one1202533533/ Horn, John. 2001. The Reviewer Who Wasn’t There. Newsweek, June 1. Lampel, Joseph, and Jamal Shamsie. 2000. Critical Push: Strategies for Creating Momentum in the Motion Picture Industry. Journal of Management 26 (2): 233–257. Lehrer, Jonah. 2009. How We Decide. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Moon, S., P.K. Bergey, and D. Iacobucci. 2010. Dynamic Effects Among Movie Ratings, Movie Revenues, and Viewer Satisfaction. Journal of Marketing 74: 108–121. Reinstein, David M., and Christopher M. Snyder. 2005. The Influence of Expert Reviews on Consumer Demand for Experience Goods: A Case Study of Movie Critics. The Journal of Industrial Economics LIII (1): 27–51. Rotten Tomatoes. 2019. Retrieved from http://www.rottentomatoes.com Smith, Deborah. 2002. Psychologist Wins Nobel Prize. Monitor on Psychology, December. 33(11). Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/monitor/dec02/ nobel.html Terry, N., M.  Butler, and D.  De’Armond. 2004. Critical Acclaim and the Box Office Performance of New Film Releases. Academy of Marketing Studies Journal 8 (1): 61–73.

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The Associated Press. 2001. High Praise From a Fictitious Critic. The New York Times, June 4. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/04/us/ high-praise-from-a-fictitious-critic.html Wallenstein, Andrew. 2017. Rotten Tomatoes Scores Don’t Impact Box Office, Study Finds. Variety, September 11. Retrieved from https://variety.com/2017/ film/news/rotten-tomatoes-scores-dont-impact-box-office-study-finds1202554546/ Welkos, Robert W. 2001. Sony Says It Will Take Action Over Fake Critic. Los Angeles Times. June 5. Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/archives/laxpm-2001-jun-05-ca-6462-story.html

CHAPTER 6

Movie Buzz & Information Cascades

Abstract  This chapter discusses the findings of an Emerson College study that evaluated the success of movies with the biggest opening weekends. This study found that many movies with the biggest opening weekends didn’t live up to expectations in light of their declining revenue in subsequent weeks. It is then demonstrated how these results are representative of information cascades. In addition, this study found an inverse relationship for critics and audience ratings among the movies with the biggest opening, second, third and fourth weekends. That is, as the weekends progressed, the average ratings of both the critics and the audience improved. Keywords  Movies • Social influence • Information cascades • Conditional probability • Bayes’ Rule • Emerson College Ryan Coogler, the director of Black Panther, said his first priority was to make a good movie. However, his inspiration for the movie started at a young age. As a boy, curious to know if there were any superheroes that looked like him, a man behind the counter at his local comic book shop in Oakland directed him to Black Panther (Kegu 2018). Therefore, Coogler was aware of the significance of directing this movie, the 18th film in the successful Marvel franchise. First, it was the first big-budget movie having an African-American director and a predominantly African-American cast. In addition, rather than just feature © The Author(s) 2020 O. Eagan, Oscar Buzz and the Influence of Word of Mouth on Movie Success, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41180-0_6

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African-American actors and actresses, the film addresses modern day issues affecting black life (Smith 2018). Moreover, the anticipation of this film resulted in it becoming Fandango’s top seller in advance ticket sales for Marvel movies in the first 24  hours. That record had previously been held by Captain America: Civil War (McNary 2018). The film would go on to earn $201.8 m ­ illion in its opening weekend debut, the fifth largest opening of all time. It shattered a few records in the process, including the largest opening weekend for an African-American director. F. Gary Gray, the director of the Fate of the Furious, had held that record for a $98 million debut in April 2017 (Pallotta 2018a). It also broke the record for the biggest opening weekend in February, which was held by Deadpool for its $132 million opening in 2016 (Pallotta 2018a). On President’s Day of its opening weekend, the movie would garner $40.16 million and would best Star Wars: The Force Awakens for the biggest Monday in box office history. It surpassed Deadpool for the biggest President’s Day opening and holds the second largest four-day opening behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Pallotta 2018b). That said, as our research has found, the movies with the biggest opening weekends aren’t always the most successful. This is due to the influence of word of mouth. That is, despite the level of anticipation for some movies, some of them don’t live up to their expectations. Therefore, their revenue in subsequent weeks can experience a sharp decline. In fact, this is why the Hollywood adage “Nobody knows anything” persists. That is, even though big data can inform investment decisions, research has found that there is no formula studios can use to guarantee a movie’s success. For instance, a study we conducted at Emerson College found that many movies with the biggest opening weekends didn’t continue to meet their expectations in light of their declining revenue in subsequent weeks. Specifically, this research consisted of analyzing the top 100 movies on each of the biggest opening, second, third and fourth weekends. The study then calculated their average percentage change in weekend box office revenue in their first four weeks (Eagan 2016). As shown in Fig. 6.1, movies with the biggest opening weekends had an average percentage change of −54 percent, −48 percent, −42 percent and −43 percent. Movies with the biggest second weekends were −45 percent, −47 percent, −39 percent and −41 percent; the biggest third weekends were −41 percent, −38 percent, −38 percent and −38 percent;

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Percentage Change

0% 1

2

3

4

-20% -40% -60%

Weekends Opening Weekends

Second Weekends

Third Weekends

Fourth Weekends

Fig. 6.1  Biggest weekends 82% 80% 78% 76% 74% 72% 70% 68% 66% 64% 62% Opening Weekends

Second Weekends

Third Weekends

Fourth Weekends

Fig. 6.2  Critics & audience ratings

and the biggest fourth weekends were −36 percent, −35 percent, −31 percent and −38 percent. This resulted in an average percentage change in revenue of −47 percent, −43 percent, −39 percent and −35 percent over this period (Eagan 2016). Using Rotten Tomatoes scores, this study also found an inverse relationship for critics and audience ratings among the movies with the biggest opening, second, third and fourth weekends. That is, as shown in Fig. 6.2, as the weekends progressed, the average ratings of both the critics and the audience improved (Eagan 2016).

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This is also consistent with the study’s finding that only 73 movies from the biggest opening weekends were included among the movies from the biggest second weekends, and just 53 among the biggest third weekends and 39 among the biggest fourth weekends. This downward trend, coupled with the upward trend in favorable reviews, suggests that other movies were propelled by positive word of mouth from moviegoers (Eagan 2016). At the time of the study, one of the steepest declines was experienced by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II. Despite having the biggest opening weekend to that point of $169,189,427, it also had the biggest second weekend decline of any blockbuster. In its second weekend, the movie’s revenue dropped 72 percent to $47.4 million (Frankel 2011). Executives at Warner Brothers attributed this drop to the film’s significant opening weekend including a mid-week midnight show which earned $43.5 million. In addition, there have been plenty of other movies that have had larger percentage drops in the second weekend. However, only three movies to that point had opened to $20 million and only one had opened to more than $100 million. The latter was Twilight Saga: New Moon and had declined 70 percent in its second weekend. Although, like the Harry Potter films, the Twilight series was based on popular books and usually featured midnight openings (Frankel 2011). Also, though Batman v. Superman earned $166 million in its opening weekend in March 2016, its revenue fell by 69 percent the following week to $51.8 million. This was recognized as a steep plunge by industry observers even though most blockbusters fall at least 50 percent in their second weekend (Lang 2016). Only one other modern superhero movie fared worse in its second weekend. The movie Hulk in 2003 fell by 70 percent. After that, Batman v. Superman shares the second worst drop with X-Men Origins: Wolverine from 2009 which also fell by 69 percent (McClintock 2016). By comparison, when Wonder Woman opened the following year in June 2017, it had set the record for second weekend sales among superhero movies with only a 43 percent drop (The Numbers 2019; Abad-Santos 2017). So what accounts for this disparity? There are a number of factors. First, it didn’t help that Batman v. Superman only earned a Rotten Tomatoes score of 27%. This didn’t go unnoticed by Brent Ratner, one of the producers of the movie, whose criticism of Rotten Tomatoes we referenced in our last chapter. He said that Rotten Tomatoes is “the worst thing that we have in today’s movie culture.” He added, “I think it’s the destruction of our business” (Verhoeven 2017).

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However, as we also  discussed in the last  chapter, critics’ reviews on Rotten Tomatoes only have a modest impact on movies. And, while most of this impact is negative, a poor score wouldn’t necessarily have a severe effect. Moreover, attributing a second weekend drop to Rotten Tomatoes disregards the facts that the movie opened to $166 million in its opening weekend and still remains among the top 10 opening weekends for superhero movies. If Rotten Tomatoes scores had such a dramatic effect, it would have occurred before the movie opened and not afterwards. These types of unusual declines in revenue after the first weekend are, to some extent, evidence of the effect of certainty on information cascades. That is, information cascades occur when people make decisions based on imitating the behavior of others. This may occur based on limited information that individuals possess or no information at all. However, though information cascades can be influential, they can be fragile as well (Easley and Kleinberg 2010). This is because once new information is introduced which conflicts with the information we possessed or with the behavior we observed, the information cascade can be broken. This is very similar to the concept of herding in behavioral science. In fact, these concepts can sometimes be used interchangeably as they occur when our decision-making is influenced by the actions of others. These decisions manifest themselves in numerous situations such as deciding where to eat and which candidates to support (Banerjee 1992). As an illustration, suppose you were interested in going to restaurant A based on research that you had conducted. However, upon visiting restaurant A, you see that it is empty but that restaurant B next door is full of customers. Hence, you might abandon restaurant A in favor of restaurant B based on your observations (Easley and Kleinberg 2010). Many people like to think that they’re immune to the pressures of social influence or social proof. As a case in point, one study sought to find what influenced BMW owners’ buying decisions. To that end, the owners were asked via anonymous surveys if they were influenced by factors such as price, gas mileage, what their friends thought and the pressure to fit in. They agreed that all of these factors affected the decision-making process but there was one notable exception. They thought that others were ­influenced by whether the car was perceived as cool or whether high-status people bought the car. But not them (Berger 2016). In some cases, most people aren’t even aware of social influence occurring. In another experiment, Princeton sociologist Matthew Salganik

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developed a website to allow people to listen to music and download it for free. The music consisted of unknown songs from unknown artists but people were allowed to see what previous listeners had downloaded. The songs were then ranked according to their popularity (Berger 2016). Salganik created one other condition to see whether the popularity of the songs was driven by success alone. Therefore, he created eight different worlds that looked identical initially. However, though the worlds started the same, the popularity of the songs varied widely. This is because people were influenced by the choices of those who came before them (Berger 2016). In addition, there are numerous other examples of social influence occurring in both conscious and nonconscious ways. For instance, as Robert Cialdini states in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, this is why laugh tracks are still employed by television executives for situation comedies. Despite the fact that people recognize this as manufactured laughter, research has shown that people laugh longer and more often when these devices are used (Cialdini 2006). Social influence can also help us understand the Werther effect. This phenomenon was named after a novel written by Johann von Goethe in 1774 entitled Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther). The book, in which the main character commits suicide, sparked a wave of suicides across Europe. Today, this effect refers to an increase in the suicide rate in the wake of a highly publicized suicide (Cialdini 2006). The bystander effect is a product of social influence as well. This effect arises in circumstances where a person might require emergency aid such as an accident but, because the need is unclear, bystanders rely on others for evidence. That is, if witnesses don’t see other people reacting then they are likely to interpret the situation as a non-emergency (Cialdini 2006). Moreover, Cialdini cites several studies which found that social influence is especially effective when we are observing the behavior of people who are similar to us. He contends this is the reason we see so many testimonials from ordinary people in television advertising (Cialdini 2006). Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, the authors of Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, claim that social influence is also why so much advertising invokes the popularity of brands such as the “most people prefer” strategy (Thaler and Sunstein 2009). As further evidence of social influence, Thaler and Sunstein point to the numerous conformity studies that have confirmed the results of the Solomon Asch experiments. In these experiments, participants were asked

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to identify matching lines in a diagram. However, they were asked after the experimenter’s assistants intentionally gave the incorrect answer. As a result, this study and others like it have found that a significant number of people will conform to the majority when they are asked to publicly state their answers to experimental questions after first hearing from others (Thaler and Sunstein 2009). When it comes to movie buzz, it is reasonable to suggest that some people are influenced by the actions of others. This is due to the limited information that is available about new movies and the fact that people won’t know if they like a movie until they see it. There are many reasons to see a highly anticipated movie. People could be influenced by the producer, the director, the genre and the actors or actresses. It could be the critics’ reviews. It could be the marketing campaign  or  what people  observe others  doing through earned, paid and social media. It could be the sheer amount of buzz. Or, it could be a combination of several or all of these factors. But what if you’re a little more risk-­averse than others? That is, what if you typically like to wait until others have seen the movie first so that you can factor in their opinions? You may be content with hearing from several people whose opinions you trust. However, what if their opinions are split? You would likely weigh these decisions against other information you obtained. But, there is actually a mathematical model to help us make decisions under conditions of uncertainty. This theorem, called Bayes’ Rule, was developed by English clergyman Thomas Bayes in the eighteenth century. Bayes’ Rule is a formula that allows us to update probabilities with the introduction of new evidence. This is especially effective when information is scarce and outcomes are uncertain. For instance, Bayes’ rule is used to separate spam from email based on user habits and assist driverless cars by updating road and traffic information (Bertsch McGrayne 2011). In particular, this formula helps us determine the conditional probability of event A given the occurrence of event B. A great illustration of Bayes’ Rule is presented by David Easley and Jon Kleinberg in their book Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning about a Highly Connected World. In their example, a person witnesses a ­hit-and-­run accident with a taxi cab and testifies that the taxi cab was yellow. However, 80 percent of the taxi cabs are black and 20 percent of the taxi cabs are yellow in the city. The authors also state that eyewitness testimony is imperfect and, as a result, witnesses identify the right color of a taxi only 80 percent of the time.

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To determine whether the witness’s testimony is accurate, we need to know its statistical probability. That is, using Bayes’ Rule, we can estimate the conditional probability of one event given that another event has occurred. Specifically, we refer to the prior probability of event A as Pr[A] and the posterior probability of A given B as Pr[A| B] in the formula below. Pr [ A| B ] =

Pr [ A] × Pr [ B| A] Pr [ B ]



We’ll then designate true as the true color of the taxi and report as the reported color of the taxi. We’ll also denote Y as yellow and B as black. To determine the value of Pr[true = Y| report = Y] we use the following equation. Pr [ true = Y |report = Y ] =

Pr[ true = Y ] × Pr[report = Y |true = Y ] Pr[report = Y ]



The probability of the taxi cab being yellow, or Pr [true = Y], is 0.2 as this is the frequency of yellow taxi cabs. Also, the accuracy of eyewitness testimony, or Pr [report = Y| true = Y], is 0.8. For our denominator of Pr [report = Y], an eyewitness can report a taxi as yellow in two ways. One way is for a taxi to actually be yellow and the other is for it to actually be black. As a result, we need to determine the probability for each of these scenarios. The probability of the taxi being yellow is determined by the subsequent formula.

Pr [ true = Y ] × Pr[report = Y |true = Y ] = 0.2 × 0.8 = 0.16



And the probability of the taxi being black is found as follows.

Pr[ true = B ] × Pr [report = Y |true = B ] = 0.8 × 0.2 = 0.16



We then determine the probability of a report of yellow with the sum of these probabilities.

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Pr [report = Y ] = Pr[ true = Y ] × Pr [report = Y |true = Y ] + Pr[ true = B ] × Pr [report = Y |true = B ] = 0.2 × 0.8 + 0.8 × 0.2 = 0.32 Once we have this data, we enter it into our equation. Pr [ true = Y |report = Y ] =

Pr[ true = Y ] × Pr[report = Y |true = Y ] Pr[report = Y ]

0.2 × 0.8 0.32 = 0.5 =





Hence, our results indicate that the likelihood of the taxi cab being yellow is equally likely to have been yellow or black. This conditional probability formula can also be used to illustrate the decision-making process of weighing evidence for a highly anticipated movie. We’re not suggesting using this formula to make these decisions but offer this as a hypothetical example. For this purpose, let’s assume that there are two sources that you trust. One source consists of the reviews of films critics on Rotten Tomatoes. The other source is comprised of the opinions of your family and friends. As our critics’ rating, we’ll use the average Rotten Tomatoes score for movies with the biggest opening weekends of 68 percent as our prior probability. In addition, let’s say that about 60 percent of your family and friends enjoyed a recent highly anticipated movie which we’ll use to represent the posterior probability in this scenario. Given this information, you want to know if this movie is worth seeing in light of this conflicting evidence. In this exercise, we’ll use true as the true outcome of the movie, report as the reported outcome of the movie, F as favorable and U as unfavorable. Therefore, to determine the value of Pr[true = F| report = F] we use the following formula. Pr [ true = F |report = F ] =

Pr[ true = F ] × Pr[report = F |true = F ] Pr[report = F ]



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Using the critics’ rating, we know that the prior probability of a favorable outcome, or Pr [true = F], is 0.68. We also know that Pr [report = F| true = F] is 0.60 given the opinions of your family and friends. As we discussed earlier, there are two ways a movie can be reported as favorable. That is, it can be reported as actually favorable or actually unfavorable. Therefore, to determine the probability of a movie being favorable we use this equation.

Pr [ true = F ] × Pr [report = F |true = F ] = 0.68 × 0.60 = 0.408



And, to determine the probability of a movie being unfavorable, we use this formula.

Pr[ true = U ] × Pr [report = F |true = U ] = 0.32 × 0.40 = 0.128



The probability of a favorable report is determined by summing these probabilities.



Pr [report = F ] = Pr [ true = F ] = Pr [report = F |true = F ] + Pr [ true = U ] × Pr [report = F |true = U ] = 0.68 × 0.60 + 0.32 × 0.40 = 0.536



We can now enter this data into the following equation. Pr [ true = F |report = F ] = 0.68 × 0.60 0.536 = 0.76

Pr[ true = F ] × Pr[report = F |true = F ] Pr[report = F ]

=



These results indicate that there is a 76 percent chance that you’ll find this movie enjoyable. If we were to use the critics rating of 79 percent on the biggest fourth weekends, there would be an 85 percent chance that you would enjoy the movie.

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Moreover, as you learn more about the movie from other sources, you may continue to update your beliefs about the movie. In that case, Bayes’ Rule could still be applied. In fact, my colleagues Eiki Satake and Amy Vashlishan Murray conducted a study among Emerson College students to demonstrate the cumulative nature of Bayes’ Rule and the ease with which it could be explained using a real-life situation (Satake and Vashlishan Murray 2014). To demonstrate this, they used a hypothetical legal scenario that had the students evaluate the probability of guilt of a suspect. Specifically, they had the students calculate probabilities of guilt or innocence based on the introduction of new evidence such as blood type, fingerprints and DNA. In the process, they needed to assess both the strength of the evidence (i.e., the probabilities of the matches) and how each of the prior probabilities influenced the posterior probabilities (Satake and Vashlishan Murray 2014). While conducting the study, they also compared this approach with a traditional approach used in a statistics textbook. They found that their case study increased students’ interest, engagement and intrigue in the material. They also found that students reported more confidence in interpreting and explaining results, and could more easily apply what they learned to other scenarios (Satake and Vashlishan Murray 2014). Bayes’ Rule sheds light on the introduction of new evidence in the movie-going experience as well. Specifically, our own study found that many highly anticipated movies were affected by an information cascade. That is, movies with the biggest opening weekends were driven by information that people observed publicly and information that they possessed privately. However, due to the uncertainty that exists until people see the movies, some of these movies lose their appeal if they don’t live up to expectations. These findings are supported by the weekly percentage changes in revenue among movies with the biggest opening, second, third and fourth weekends. It is also apparent in the inverse correlation between these movies and critics and audience ratings as the weeks progressed. And, it is evident in the diminishing number of movies from the biggest opening weekends included in subsequent weekends. So, while Black Panther had an incredibly successful opening weekend, how would it fare in the following weeks? In the next chapter, we’ll answer this question in the context of the influence of word of mouth on movies.

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References Abad-Santos, Alex. 2017. Why Wonder Woman’s Second-Weekend Sales Are so Extraordinary – And Important. Vox, June 12. Retrieved from https://www. vox.com/culture/2017/6/12/15782354/wonder-woman-box-officesecond-weekend Banerjee, Abhijit V. 1992. A Simple Model of Herd Behavior. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, August. Berger, Jonah. 2016. Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. Bertsch McGrayne, Sharon. 2011. Why Bayes Rules: The History of a Formula That Drives Modern Life. Scientific American, May 1. Retrieved from https:// www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-bayes-rules/ Cialdini, Robert B. 2006. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. New  York: Harper Business. Eagan, Owen. 2016. Movie Buzz & Information Cascades. Journal of International Business Disciplines, December. Easley, David, and Jon Kleinberg. 2010. Networks, Crowds and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World. New York: Cambridge University Press. Frankel, Daniel. 2011. From 1st to Worst: Harry Potter Posts Biggest 2nd Week Decline Ever for a Blockbuster. The Wrap. July 25. Retrieved from https:// www.thewrap.com/first-worst-harry-potters-72-drop-biggest-week-2-declineever-blockbuster-29431/ Kegu, Jessica. 2018. Director Ryan Coogler’s First Priority with ‘Black Panther’ Was to Make a Good Movie. CBS News. February 14. Retrieved from https:// www.cbsnews.com/news/black-panther-director-ryan-coogler/ Lang, Brent. 2016. Final Box Office: ‘Batman v Superman’ Suffers 69% Drop to $51.8 Million. Variety, April 4. Retrieved from https://variety.com/2016/ film/box-office/batman-v-superman-box-office-second-weekend-drop1201744845/ McClintock, Pamela. 2016. Box Office: Inside ‘Batman v. Superman’s Historic Drop-off. The Hollywood Reporter, April 4. Retrieved from https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/box-office-inside-batman-v-880143 McNary, Dave. 2018. ‘Black Panther’ Becomes Fandango’s Top Early Pre-Seller Among Marvel Movies. Variety, January 10. Retrieved from https://variety. com/2018/film/news/black-panther-advance-ticket-sales-record-1202659579/ Pallotta, Frank. 2018a. ‘Black Panther’ Brings in a Record-Breaking Box Office Weekend. CNN Business, February 19. Retrieved from https://money.cnn. com/2018/02/18/media/black-panther-box-office/index.html ———. 2018b. ‘Black Panther’ Crushes Box Office Records in Opening Weekend. CNN Business. February 20. Retrieved from https://money. cnn.com/2018/02/20/media/black-panther-box-office-presidents-day/ index.html

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Satake, Eiki, and Amy Vashlishan Murray. 2014. Teaching an Application of Bayes’ Rule for Legal Decision-Making: Measuring the Strength of Evidence. Journal of Statistics Education, 22(1), March. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286502713_Teaching_an_Application_of_Bayes%27_ Rule_for_Legal_Decision-Making_Measuring_the_Strength_of_Evidence Smith, Jamil. 2018. The Revolutionary Power of Black Panther. Time, February 11. Retrieved from https://time.com/black-panther/ Thaler, Richard H., and Cass R.  Sunstein. 2009. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. London: Penguin Books. The Numbers. 2019. Retrieved from http://www.the-numbers.com Verhoeven, Beatrice. 2017. Director Brett Ratner Says Rotten Tomatoes Is the ‘Destruction of Our Business.’ The Wrap, March 23. Retrieved from https:// www.thewrap.com/brett-ratner-rotten-tomatoes-destruction-of-our-business/

CHAPTER 7

The Influence of Word of Mouth

Abstract  This chapter analyzes the effects of word of mouth on a movie’s performance at the box office. Specifically, an Emerson College study found consistent trends among high and low performers, resulting in a 30 percent average weekly revenue difference in their opening weeks. Also discussed is another Emerson College study  which found that Twitter could demonstrate how buzz influences movies. For example, researchers found that both tweet sentiment and tweet rate were strongly correlated with movie revenue. Keywords  Movies • Diffusion of innovations • Word of mouth • Oscars • Razzies • Profitability • Gross profit • Tweet sentiment • Tweet rate • Emerson College There was no internal plumbing, heating or electricity on the Pinehurst Farm in Carroll, Iowa, where Everett Rogers was born on March 6, 1931. And, during the harsh winters on the family farm, Rogers recalled, “One’s hands got red and chapped from wearing wet gloves or mittens when doing chores, and from milking the dairy cows.” He attended a one-room school about a mile away and returned home to numerous chores (Singhal 2012). Despite the fact that his mother, Madeline, instilled in him a love of books, Rogers wasn’t sure about attending college because he wanted to © The Author(s) 2020 O. Eagan, Oscar Buzz and the Influence of Word of Mouth on Movie Success, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41180-0_7

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be a farmer. However, a high school teacher drove him to the Ames campus of Iowa State University (ISU) and persuaded him to apply. He was granted a tuition scholarship and enrolled in the fall of 1948 to pursue a degree in agriculture (Singhal 2012). At the time, ISU was conducting pioneering studies on the diffusion of agricultural innovations such as hybrid seed corn, chemical fertilizers and weed sprays. Questions were being raised about why some farmers adopted these innovations while others didn’t. In particular, Rogers’ father saw the value of electro-mechanical farm innovations but was resistant to biological-­chemical innovations (Singhal 2012). He finally became convinced after witnessing the hybrid seed corn growing abundantly on neighbors’ farms while his crop wilted during the drought in 1936. But Rogers was intrigued by his father’s initial reluctance to adopt, realizing that this was not just a rational economic decision but one more influenced by the opinions of neighbors. As a result, the social aspects of innovation diffusion became the focus of Rogers’ graduate studies (Singhal 2012). His doctoral dissertation, completed in 1957 and titled A Conceptual Variable Analysis of Technological Change, included 155 farmers in Collins, Iowa, and analyzed the adoption of various agricultural innovations. Rogers’ study focused on predicting the variance in innovativeness, defined as the degree to which an individual is relatively earlier in adopting new ideas than other members of a system. He discovered that innovativeness was normally distributed and allowed the creation of standard adopter categories (Singhal 2012). Rogers reviewed hundreds of diffusion studies in a variety of fields including agriculture, education, medical and marketing, and found that they all followed the same pattern of adoption. His review of these studies would become the basis for Rogers’ groundbreaking book, Diffusion of Innovations, published in 1962 (Singhal 2012). Among the research he reviewed was a classic diffusion study of hybrid seed corn by Bryce Ryan and Neal Gross. This study was considered to be the origin of the research specialty of the diffusion of innovations. It also found that diffusion is a social process (Rogers 2003). The Columbia University drug diffusion study is considered to be the second most influential analysis behind the Ryan and Gross study in terms of its contributions to diffusion research. This study was conducted by Elihu Katz, Herbert Menzel and James Coleman of Columbia University’s Bureau of Applied Social Research in 1966 (Rogers 2003).

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This research analyzed the diffusion of a new drug (tetracycline) in four Illinois cities and helped shed light on the role that opinion leaders play in the diffusion process. In particular, it found that interconnectedness was the best predictor of innovativeness and oriented future investigations toward interpersonal networks (Rogers 2003). Rogers’ diffusion model would become an essential theory in communication studies and marketing programs. This model was also used in Geoffrey Moore’s classic book, Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers. And, Tom Byers, the director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, stated in 2006 that it was “still the bible for entrepreneurial marketing 15 years later” (Byers 2006). Rogers defined diffusion as “the process in which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system.” Given his finding that diffusion tended to be normally distributed, he developed adopter categories based on the mean and standard deviation of the diffusion curve. As seen in Fig. 7.1, the first category, lying two standard deviations from the left of the mean, consists of innovators. The next category, lying one standard deviation from the left of the mean, are the early adopters. This is followed by the early majority, the late majority and the laggards (Rogers 2003). New ideas, products or services were typically introduced by innovators, who are described as venturesome and risk takers. They also tend to be cosmopolites with networks outside of their social systems. The early adopters are a more integrated part of the local system and tend to be localites. This category usually consists of the highest degree of opinion leadership (Rogers 2003).

Fig. 7.1  Diffusion curve. (Rogers 2003)

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The early majority frequently interact with their peers but are seldom opinion leaders. They may deliberate for some time before adopting a new idea and their innovation-decision period is relatively longer. The late majority are generally skeptical and cautious of new ideas. They are strongly influenced by peers but their relatively limited resources mean that most of the uncertainty about the new idea must be eliminated before adoption. Laggards are the most localite and many are near isolates in their social system. Their resistance to new ideas may be rational from their perspective given their limited resources (Rogers 2003). Rogers characterized innovators and early adopters as opinion leaders due to their ability to influence others. That is, the early majority and subsequent groups were unlikely to adopt a new idea unless it was first adopted by the opinion leaders. It is important to note that opinion leaders can serve as an expert on a single subject or a variety of subjects and that we are all opinion leaders on one subject or another. Even children can serve as opinion leaders on topics such as toys and video games. It is for this reason that we can find ourselves at different points on this curve at different times depending on the topic (Rogers 2003). As we mentioned earlier, there’s as an adage in Hollywood that “Nobody knows anything.” That is, even though big data can inform investment decisions, research has found that there is no formula studios can use to guarantee a movie’s success. This is because of the influence of word of mouth and whether viewers recommend a film or not. Goldman’s contention was subsequently confirmed in a study by Arthur DeVany of the University of California at Irvine and David Walls of the University of Hong Kong. In their analysis of 300 movies released between May 1985 and January 1986, they found that 20 percent of the films generated 80 percent of the revenue. However, they were unable to identify any characteristics such as the genre, cast or the budget that distinctly distinguished these movies from others. The best predictor they found was the movie’s performance the previous week (Cassidy 1997). Therefore, in the fall of 2015, my students and I conducted a study to evaluate the effects of word of mouth on movies. We hypothesized that if word of mouth was a primary indicator of movie success then it should be evident in the difference in revenue from week to week for high-­performing and low-performing films (Eagan 2016). To test this hypothesis, we attempted to assess the impact of word of mouth on successful and unsuccessful movies over the previous 20 years. We felt that by using revenue as a proxy for word of mouth,

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we were likely to find patterns or trends that emerged in the data (Eagan 2016). We decided to use the percentage change in weekly revenue as our primary indicator since this would reflect a movie’s popularity among audiences over a definitive period of time. However, the challenge for us was in defining successful and unsuccessful movies. After all, success could be defined in numerous ways. It could be defined as a critically acclaimed movie. Or, it could be defined as box office revenue. But would box office revenue mean total revenue or return on investment? (Eagan 2016). We also needed a standard metric that would allow us to compare apples to apples over this 20-year period. As a result, we decided to use commonly accepted standards for what are generally seen as good and bad movies. These standards are far from perfect but they are likely better than any others because movies are so subjective (Eagan 2016). We used films that were nominated for an Academy Award as Best Picture as our standard for good movies. However, there are admittedly a number of challenges with using this metric. First, this award is not without controversy. As background, this award is chosen by the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, consisting of more than 7000 industry professionals. For most of the categories, the nominees are chosen by their peers from their respective fields. However, the nominees for Best Picture are chosen by all academy members. The winners in each category are chosen by all members as well (Garofalo 2015). Having film professionals evaluate their peers seems to be a reasonable way of granting these awards. However, the academy became embroiled in controversy in 2015 for its lack of diversity. The issue erupted when Ava DuVernay and David Oyelowo were left out of the Best Director and Best Actor categories for the civil rights movie Selma. In fact, all of the acting nominees that year were white which fueled a storm of criticism toward the academy and led to the emergence of the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite (Olson 2015). However, significant racial and gender imbalances in film and television were found both behind and in front of the camera according to the Hollywood Diversity Report, which was conducted by the Ralph J.  Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA (NPR 2015). In addition, the decisions of the academy are typically debated for one reason or another. In 2015, six of the seven movie nominees faced some form of controversy including American Sniper, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game, Selma, The Theory of Everything and Whiplash (Dockterman 2015).

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For those films characterized as bad movies, we used those that were nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award. Called the Razzies, these awards recognize the worst movies and performances every year. They were created by copywriter and publicist John Wilson in 1980, and their voting universe consists of more than 600 voters in the US and more than a dozen foreign countries. Memberships are not exclusive and can be purchased online (Feeney 2015). While this universe isn’t as distinct as the academy’s members and isn’t scientific, they are widely recognized and garner significant media coverage (Golden Raspberry Awards 2015). We obtained our financial data from The Numbers website, which was created in 1997 and is a product of Nash Information Services, LLC. It is the largest online database of freely available movie industry information (The Numbers 2019). We also consulted Box Office Mojo, owned and operated by IMDb, for movie information as well (Box Office Mojo 2015). Our sample for evaluating the effects of word of mouth consisted of the Best Picture and Worst Picture nominees from 1996 to 2015, resulting in over 200 movies from this period. We specifically looked at the percentage change in revenue between a movie’s first weekend after its widest release and its second weekend. In our analysis, we referred to this period as a movie’s first week and then compared it to the movie’s percentage change in revenue over the next three weeks (Eagan 2016). We thought that the weekly percentage change in revenue was a reasonable proxy for word of mouth for several reasons. First, the weekly percentage change in revenue provides an apples-to-apples metric that allows us to compare one movie to another regardless of how much a movie earns. Second, if word of mouth has a significant influence on movies, then it should be reflected in a movie’s revenue from week to week. Moreover, since the diffusion of new ideas, products and services is a social process, then we expected patterns to emerge in the data as opinion leaders, or high-value customers as we discussed in an earlier chapter, either recommended or didn’t recommend a film (Eagan 2016). Once we collected the revenue data for each of these movies over their first four weekends, we averaged their percentage change in revenue from week to week for both the high performers and the low performers. We statistically removed outliers to prevent them from skewing the results. One such outlier was the movie “New Year’s Eve.” Despite being nominated for a Razzie in 2012, this film realized a 91 percent increase in revenue on its third weekend because it began on Friday, December 30, 2001. This stood in stark contrast to the drops of 44 percent and 55 percent in its first two weeks (Eagan 2016).

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Fig. 7.2  High versus low performers

Our analysis found consistent results among both high and low performers as evident in Fig. 7.2. For Oscar nominees, the average percentage change was −24 percent, −26 percent, −25 percent and −21 percent over the first four weeks, whereas the average percentage change for Razzie nominees was −54 percent, −56 percent, −53 percent and −54 percent. Overall, the average percentage change during this four-week period for Oscar nominees was −24 percent and for Razzie nominees it was −54 percent, resulting in an average difference of −30 percent (Eagan 2016). It should be noted that this is not a hard and fast rule as there was some variation in percentage changes from week to week among Best Picture nominees and Worst Picture nominees. That is, there were cases where percentage changes for movies in each of these categories would approach those of the other. Consequently, this analysis shouldn’t be interpreted as a model to predict movie success. It can be more accurately used to identify trends among and between these movies, and as a benchmark for a movie’s appeal (Eagan 2016). We were aware that our research period overlapped with the advent of social media. Therefore, we wanted to see if there was a difference in the pre- and post-social media periods. Because pinpointing the beginning of social media was a challenge, we decided to use the point at which it became ubiquitous. For instance, though Facebook is the most popular social networking site, there are sites such as Friendster and MySpace that preceded it. Moreover, it’s important to remember that Facebook was founded in 2004 as a site for Harvard students and remained a site for ­college students for two years (Digital Trends Staff 2014). It would later open its network to everyone on September 26, 2006 (Abram 2006).

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Since this date was near the end of 2006, we used 2007 as the point of delineation for the social media periods. Specifically, we identified those movies in our sample from 1996 to 2006 as part of the pre-social media era and those from 2007 to 2015 as part of the post-social media era. We then conducted the same analysis for Best Picture and Worst Picture nominees for both of these periods and, once again, removed statistical outliers (Eagan 2016). As shown in Fig. 7.3, we found some variation between these periods but nothing significant. The difference for Oscar nominees between the pre-social media and post-social media periods was about 5 percent. Compared to the entire research period, the difference was only 2–3 percent. The Razzie nominees had a difference of less than 1 percent between the pre-social media and post-social media periods as well as the larger period (Eagan 2016). In addition, the change between Oscar nominees and Razzie nominees was 33 percent in the pre-social media period and 27 percent in the post-­ social media period. These figures are fairly consistent with the average percentage change between these movies over the entire research period which was 30 percent (Eagan 2016). Intuitively, you might have been inclined to believe that there would be more of a difference between these two periods given the perceived influence of word of mouth. As a case in point, I usually ask my students whether they think more word of mouth occurs online or offline. Most of them instinctively say that they believe it’s online and that it’s much more prevalent. Not only are they wrong but research has found that only 7 percent of word of mouth occurs online (Berger 2016). Once the students

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Fig. 7.3  Pre- versus post-social media

Low Performers Post-Social Media

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start to think about this more carefully, it begins to make more sense to them. They realize that most of their recommendations come from family and friends since those are the people that they most trust and with whom they most socialize. They also realize that most of those conversations happen offline as they interact with them most frequently face-to-face. Previous research has found that Oscar winners generate more revenue than other movies. For instance, Edmund Helmer of BoxOfficeQuant.com has found that the average movie from 2000 to 2009 generated roughly $19 million domestically compared to $143 million for a Best Picture winner. This is not only attributed to their quality but, as Helmer discovered, the value of an Academy Award itself could affect a film’s revenue. Specifically, he found that a Best Picture award could translate into an “Oscar bump” of about $14 million (Helmer 2011). He also found that a Golden Globe win could have more of an effect than an Oscar but that the Academy Award winners earn more in box office revenue (Helmer 2013). However, though revenue is related to profitability, they are definitely distinct. On average, six or seven out of ten movies are unprofitable and one might break even according to industry analyst Harold Vogel (Vogel 2011). This isn’t a surprise given the unpredictable nature of the movie business. Therefore, to better understand this issue, we gathered data for the production costs and worldwide revenue for all of the movies in our research sample. We then calculated the gross profit for each movie by subtracting the production costs from total revenue. Unfortunately, marketing expenses are not included in the production cost figures provided by our data source. According to movie studios, marketing a film internationally could cost as much as $200 million as of 2014. The average cost to market a movie in 1980 was $4.3 million. This number rose to nearly $36 million in 2007, which was the last year the Motion Picture Association of America provided this data (McClintock 2014). We can see the relationship between production budgets and gross profits of the Oscar and Razzie nominees in Fig.  7.4. What is probably most apparent is that Razzie nominees were in the red even before marketing expenses are included. By comparison, all but two Oscar nominees were in the black. In addition, you’ll see a few outliers among this group as well (Eagan 2016). Any guesses as to which films these outliers were between 1996 and 2015? One took place on a ship a long time ago and the other took place on an imaginary planet in the future. If you guessed the movies Titanic and Avatar, you would be correct. Titanic, which won the Oscar for Best

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Fig. 7.4  Gross profit versus production budget

Picture in 1998, was produced for $200 million and earned $2.2 billion worldwide. This resulted in a gross profit of $2 billion. Avatar, which was nominated for Best Picture in 2010, was produced for $425 million and generated $2.8 billion internationally. This generated a gross profit of $2.4 billion (Eagan 2016). Despite the amount of money that these films earned, many others were more profitable. You might be asking yourself, what could be more profitable than $2.4 billion? Yes, those movies earned the most money but they didn’t have the highest return on investment. This figure is calculated by comparing a movie’s gross revenue to its production budget in terms of its percentage gain. So, using Titanic as an example, we subtract the production budget from gross revenue to get the gross profit. Then, we divide the gross profit by the production budget and multiply that number by 100 to get the percentage gain. Therefore, the return on investment for Titanic was 1004 percent. Using this formula for Avatar, this film had a 553 percent return. As impressive as this is, there were actually 22 movies with returns of more than 1000 percent and 9 with returns of more than 2000 percent. The Full Monty, having been produced for $3.5 million, garnered $254 million in gross profit for a return of 7167 percent. But the movie with the highest return on investment was The Blair Witch Project. Produced for just $60,000, this film earned $248 million for a 413,733 percent return (Eagan 2016).

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This was extremely unusual for a Worst Picture nominee. In fact, it outperformed the others by such a wide margin that it could not even be represented on the chart. What is perhaps even more unusual is that this is not even the most profitable film ever made (Avila 2010; Frankel 2009). That distinction goes to Paranormal Activity. This film had a production budget of only $15,000 yet earned $194 million internationally at the box office. This resulted in a return on investment of 1,294,454 percent. As a genre, horror movies might be the most profitable. Even though they represent a small percentage of box office revenue, they are extremely profitable because they have limited production costs and wide international appeal. That said, they typically don’t generate huge amounts of money and are still prone to risk (Hickey 2015). In light of our findings that revenue can serve as a good proxy for word of mouth, we wanted to see to what extent social media could be used to serve as an indicator as well. There have been numerous studies that have analyzed the potential of social media to serve as a predictive model including predicting changes in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and forecasting box office revenue. One study found that a movie’s tweet rate could be a better predictor than the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX). The HSX, a simulated stock market where people can buy and sell virtual movie shares, is considered to be one of the most accurate predictors of a film’s success (Asur and Huberman 2010). Wikipedia has also been used as a means of predicting opening weekend box office revenue by measuring pre-release activity on the site (Mestyán et al. 2013). Another study using Twitter compared the ratio of positive to negative tweets about a film to its profit ratio. Though the positive tweet to negative tweet ratio curve had the same tendency as the profit ratio, this study was found to have certain limitations such as the accuracy of the sentiment analysis software (Jain 2013). This is not uncommon as other social media studies on the impact of word of mouth on sales have found mixed results (Oh 2013). Our study was intended to build upon previous work by conducting a more thorough analysis of sentiments on Twitter. Specifically, we wanted to determine whether there was a correlation between positive and negative sentiments and weekly changes in box office revenue. Our objective wasn’t to assess how these sentiments affected box office performance but to see to what extent this relationship exists, especially since so little of word of mouth occurs online (Berger 2016).

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Moreover, we also didn’t attempt to analyze the impact of word of mouth on social media because different platforms behave differently. As an example, one study analyzed the unique influence of microblogging word or mouth (MWOM) and the so-called “Twitter effect.” Many industry observers believed that the failure of the movie Brüno and the success of the movie Inglourious Basterds was attributed to this effect (Corliss 2009; Singh 2009). Researchers have been able to quantify the Twitter effect on movies’ opening weekends such as whether MWOM on Twitter could affect early product adoption and whether there was a difference between positive and negative MWOM (Hennig-Thurau et al. 2014). They found that negative reviews on a movie’s opening day decreased revenues on Saturday and Sunday but that positive reviews had no influence. Researchers believed that this negativity bias was the result of the diagnosticity of information and prospect theory. In particular, they felt that the negative messages had more of a diagnostic value because consumers had only been exposed to promotional material at this point. In addition, according to prospect theory, developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Teversky, people are more likely to avoid losses than they are to seek gains (Hennig-Thurau et al. 2014). Even though we weren’t assessing the impact of word of mouth, we wanted to see if its influence was evident since it’s seen as the most effective form of marketing. As McKinsey & Company has stated, “Word of mouth generates more than twice the sales of paid advertising in categories as diverse as skincare and mobile phones” (Bughin et al. 2010). Due to its influence, our first hypothesis was that we would find a strong correlation between Twitter sentiment and movie revenue (Eagan 2017). We also wanted to see if there was a relationship between a movie’s tweet rate after its release and its box office revenue. That is, we knew that tweet rate was a reliable predictor of opening weekend box office performance but we wanted to know if it could also be a good indicator of successive weekends (Asur and Huberman 2010). Further, we wanted to know whether there was a qualitative difference between sentiment analysis and tweet rate so we used the same methodology in both studies. In light of earlier evidence, our second hypothesis was that we would find a strong correlation between tweet rate of box office performance (Eagan 2017). For our first study, we collected tweets about movies over their initial four weeks using the analytics tool Tweet Archivist. We identified hashtags used by the movie studios to promote their films to gather our data. This resulted in a sample of 17 movies that were released in the fall of 2016 and

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the collection of 800,739 tweets. We reduced the data by creating random samples that we could code manually. We analyzed a random sample of 400 tweets every week for each movie for up to four weeks. In some cases, we were only able to gather a week of data for low-performing movies. Others wouldn’t allow the collection of any data. Out of the 17 movies in our universe, only 11 allowed the collection of at least a week of data for our analysis. Our data set for these 11 movies consisted of 12,000 tweets over 30 weeks (Eagan 2017). After coding the tweets for positive and negative sentiments, we compared the average weekly positive sentiments with the average weekly percentage change for every movie. We defined weekly sentiments as those occurring from Friday to Thursday of the following week. However, weekly revenue was defined as the percentage change from weekend to weekend to allow us to compare our data with previous studies using this methodology (Eagan 2017). The second study consisted of collecting movie tweets over the first four weeks using the same hashtag sampling method. Our sample consisted of eight movies that were released in the spring of 2017. The difference in the number of movies that we used for this study was due to the number of weeks with sufficient data. That is, the volume of tweets was much greater than the sentiments of tweets in each of these samples (Eagan 2017). Our second universe was composed of 471,492 tweets from which we created weekly random samples to code manually. We again used samples of 400 tweets for as many weeks up to four  weeks that the data would allow. While most of the films didn’t enable us to collect four weeks of data, we were able to collect at least two weeks of data for all eight movies. From this sample, we coded 11,600 tweets for 29 weeks of data. For this study, we included all tweets related to the movies including promotional tweets and retweets. The data was coded only to confirm their relevance (Eagan 2017). We then determined the aggregate number of relevant tweets per week based on our random sample and compared this figure to a movie’s weekly gross revenue. This type of comparison of the data was different from the one we used in our sentiment analysis. In our previous study, we compared the average weekly sentiments with the average weekly percentage change in revenue for each movie over its first four weeks. We used these averages in the sentiment analysis for the entire period since overall sentiments about a movie are not likely to change from week to week (Eagan 2017).

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Our sentiment analysis found a significant relationship between positive word of mouth on Twitter and the average change in weekly revenue. That is, the more favorably a film was rated on Twitter the more money it was expected to generate. Specifically, this revenue was reflected in a lower negative percentage change from week to week (Eagan 2017). Our correlation analysis between tweet sentiments and revenue revealed an r value of 0.75. This is seen as a strong relationship since a correlation coefficient of 0.5 is considered strong, 0.3 is considered moderate and 0.1 is considered weak. This analysis also yielded a p value of less than 0.01 which means that there is a 99 percent chance of it being accurate (Eagan 2017). When visually represented, the relationship between hashtags and revenue is more easily understood and becomes more apparent. Figure 7.5 depicts the relationship between a movie’s average favorability as demonstrated through hashtags and its average percentage change in weekly revenue (Eagan 2017). In addition, this study was conducted to see if the findings of our earlier research could be confirmed. That research found that the weekly percentage change in revenue could serve as a good proxy for the influence of word of mouth. Together, these studies present compelling evidence of the role that word of mouth plays in a movie’s success. Based on the results of these studies, the impact of word of mouth on movies seemed clear. However, these studies didn’t address the impact of buzz, which we can define as the amount of chatter about a movie. Previous studies had found that tweet rate was an accurate predictor of a

Fig. 7.5  Hashtags versus revenue

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movie’s success both before and after a film’s release. However, we wanted to compare the influence of buzz to word of mouth using the same methodology. Our analysis found a strong positive relationship between tweet rate and weekly gross revenue as the more buzz a movie experienced the more revenue it generated. In particular, the correlation between tweet rate and revenue resulted in an r value of 0.69 and a p value of less than 0.01. These results are illustrated in Fig. 7.6 (Eagan 2017). These studies indicate how both word of mouth and buzz can influence movies. First, this research confirms the influence of positive and negative word of mouth on movies. Second, we have further evidence that the amount of buzz can affect a movie’s performance even after its release. Our research also seemed to indicate that the movies with more positive buzz had more buzz in general. This suggests that the more people enjoy a movie, the more likely they are to talk about it. Conversely, the less people enjoy a movie, the less likely they are to express their opinions. This is only an inference and wasn’t explicitly tested in our research. However, it seems reasonable since tweet rate has been shown to predict a movie’s performance. 80,000 70,000 60,000 50,000 40,000 30,000 20,000 10,000 0

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Fig. 7.6  Tweet rate versus revenue

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Knowing that revenue can serve as a proxy for word of mouth and that tweet rate can serve as an early indicator of a film’s success provides us with a few more metrics to prognosticate movie outcomes. For instance, at the time of our studies on sentiment analysis and tweet rate, Twitter had announced that Wonder Woman had become the most tweeted about movie of 2017 (Wagmeister 2017). The movie’s success was reflected in its box office revenue as it dropped by only 43 percent in its second weekend (The Numbers 2019). This might appear as a significant drop when compared to the average weekly percentage changes we discussed earlier for high performers (i.e., −24 percent) and low performers (i.e., −54 percent). However, superhero movies usually have steeper declines due to their bigger opening weekends. In fact, Wonder Woman’s second weekend was the best of any modern superhero movie (The Numbers 2019; Abad-Santos 2017). By comparison, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice lost 69 percent in its second weekend as we indicated in the last chapter. Although it opened to $166 million in its first weekend, it began to lose screens in its first few weeks as Deadpool was adding them (Pressberg 2016). As another contrast, while Batman v. Superman was a highly anticipated movie, Deadpool might not have been made but for the interest generated by fans in response to footage which was leaked online (Setoodeh 2017). In regard to Black Panther, we know from the previous chapter that the movie shattered a few box office records on its opening weekend. However, it would continue to set milestones in its second weekend as well. Its second weekend drop of 45 percent was not only close to Wonder Woman’s but it was the smallest weekend drop for a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie. The movie also had the second best hold for a $200 million-plus opener only behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens which fell 39 percent. In addition, it was the second biggest non-opening weekend, the second fastest to $400 million and the second biggest ten-day total all behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Mendelson 2018). Black Panther would continue to break records which includes becoming the most tweeted about movie of all time, surpassing Avengers: Infinity Wars and Star Wars: The Last Jedi. It was the best-reviewed live-action superhero film on Rotten Tomatoes as well by ousting The Dark Knight and Iron Man (Purcell 2018). Though we wouldn’t have been able to predict which records it would break, we should have been able to predict its likely success given the indicators we discussed. We also now have a better understanding of the influence of buzz and word of mouth on this process.

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References Abad-Santos, Alex. 2017. Why Wonder Woman’s Second-Weekend Sales Are so Extraordinary – And Important. Vox, June 12. Retrieved from https://www. vox.com/culture/2017/6/12/15782354/wonder-woman-box-officesecond-weekend Abram, Carolyn. 2006. Welcome to Facebook, Everyone. Facebook Blog Post, September 26. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook/ welcome-to-facebook-everyone/2210227130 Asur, Sitaram, and Bernardo A.  Huberman. 2010. Predicting the Future With Social Media. arXiv: 1003.5699v1, March 29. Avila, Michael. 2010. What’s the Most Profitable Film Ever Made? LiveScience, July 7. Retrieved from http://www.livescience.com/32685-whats-the-mostprofitable-film-ever-made.html Berger, Jonah. 2016. Contagious: Why Things Catch On. New  York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. Box Office Mojo. 2015. Retrieved from http://www.boxofficemojo.com Bughin, Jaques, Jonathan Doogan, and Ole Jørgen Vetvik. 2010. A New Way to Measure Word-of-Mouth Marketing. McKinsey Quarterly, April. Byers, Tom. 2006. Ten Enduring Success Factors for High Technology Entrepreneurship. Stanford Technology Ventures Program, January 17. Retrieved from https://art19.com/shows/entrepreneurial-thought-leaders/episodes/ f1f8c14a-487c-4373-89bc-e0a5bfdf6d18 Cassidy, John. 1997. Chaos in Hollywood. The New Yorker, March 31. Corliss, Richard. 2009. Box-Office Weekend: Brüno a One-Day Wonder? Time, July 13. Retrieved from http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/ 0,8599,1910059,00.html Digital Trends Staff. 2014. The History of Social Networking. Digital Trends, August 5. Retrieved from http://www.digitaltrends.com/features/the-historyof-social-networking Dockterman, Eliana. 2015. Everything You Need to Know about the Controversies Surrounding This Year’s Oscar Movies. Time, February  20. Retrieved from http://time.com/3716353/oscars-2015-movies-controversies-americansniper-selma Eagan, Owen. 2016. Movie Buzz & Information Cascades. Journal of International Business Disciplines, December. ———. 2017. Twitter Shows Influence of Buzz on Movies. Journal of International Business Disciplines, August. Feeney, Nolan. 2015. What Are the Razzie Awards? Time, January 14. Retrieved from http://time.com/3666870/razzie-awards-2015 Frankel, Daniel. 2009. ‘Paranormal’ Now the Most Profitable Film Ever. The Wrap, October 28. Retrieved from http://www.thewrap.com/paranormalnow-most-profitable-film-ever-9335

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Garofalo, Alex. 2015. Oscars 2015: Who Votes for the Academy Awards? How the Winners are Chosen. International Business Times, February 16. Retrieved from http://www.ibtimes.com/oscars-2015-who-votes-academy-awards-howwinners-are-chosen-1817984 Golden Raspberry Awards. 2015. Retrieved from http://www.razzies.com Helmer, Edmund. 2011. The Value of an Oscar. BoxOfficeQuant.com, February 27. Retrieved from http://boxofficequant.com/the-value-of-an-oscar ———. 2013. Golden Globe Win Worth Millions More than Oscar Victory. Reuters, January 15. Retrieved from http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2013/01/15/ golden-globe-films-are-worth-millions-more-than-oscar-winners Hennig-Thurau, Thorsten, Caroline Wiertz, and Fabian Feldhaus. 2014. Does Twitter Matter? The Impact of Microblogging Word of Mouth on Consumers’ Adoption of New Movies. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 43 (3): 375. Hickey, Walt. 2015. Scary Movies Are The Best Investment In Hollywood. FiveThirtyEight Life, October 29. Retrieved from http://fivethirtyeight.com/ datalab/scary-movies-are-the-best-investment-in-hollywood Jain, Vasu. “Prediction of Movie Success using Sentiment Analysis of Tweets.” The International Journal of Soft Computing and Software Engineering, Vol. 3, No. 3. March 2013. McClintock, Pamela. 2014. $200 Million and Rising: Hollywood Struggles With Soaring Marketing Costs. The Hollywood Reporter, July 31. Retrieved from http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/200-million-rising-hollywoodstruggles-721818 Mendelson, Scott. 2018. ‘Black Panther’ Box Office: Records And Milestones From Its First Two Months. Forbes, April 16. Retrieved from https://www. forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2018/04/16/black-panther-box-officeall-the-milestones-it-set-in-its-first-two-months/#4df6e8232284 Mestyán, Márton, Taha Yasseri, and János Kertész. 2013. Early Prediction of Movie Box Office Success Based on Wikipedia Activity Big Data. PLOS ONE, August 21. NPR Staff. 2015. Diversity Sells  – But Hollywood Remains Overwhelmingly White, Male. WBUR, February 28. Retrieved from http://www.wbur.org/ npr/389259335/diversity-sells-but-hollywood-remains-overwhelminglywhite-male Oh, Chong. 2013. Customer Engagement, Word-of-Mouth and Box Office: The Case of Movie Tweets. International Journal of Information Systems and Change Management 6 (4): 338. Olson, Elizabeth G. 2015. Will the Oscars Board of Judges Really Be Diverse One Day? Fortune, February 13. Retrieved from https://fortune.com/2015/02/13/ oscar-judges-diversity-academy-awards/

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Pressberg, Matt. 2016. Debunking Hollywood’s Opening-Weekend Myth: For The Best Movies, It’s All About Week 4. International Business Times, April 15. Retrieved from http://www.ibtimes.com/debunking-hollywoods-openingweekend-myth-best-movies-its-all-about-week-4-2354315 Purcell, Carey. 2018. ‘Black Panther’ Breaks Yet Another Record By Making Twitter History. Forbes, March 20. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/ sites/careypurcell/2018/03/20/black-panther-breaks-yet-another-recordby-making-twitter-history/#53db44fb21e8 Rogers, Everett M. 2003. Diffusion of Innovations. 5th ed. New York: Free Press. Setoodeh, Ramin. 2017. Marvel’s Bad Boy. Variety, January 3. Singh, Anita. 2009. Inglorious Basterds a Box Office Hit ‘Thanks to the Twitter Effect. The Telegraph, August 24. Singhal, Arvind. 2012. Everett M.  Rogers, an Intercultural Life: From Iowa Farm Boy to Global Intellectual. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 36: 848. The Numbers. 2019. Retrieved from http://www.the-numbers.com Vogel, H.L. 2011. Entertainment Industry Economics: A Guide for Financial Analysis. 8th ed. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wagmeister, Elizabeth. 2017. ‘Wonder Woman’ Is Most Tweeted Movie of 2017 (Exclusive). Variety, June 8. Retrieved from http://variety.com/2017/digital/ news/wonder-woman-twitter-record-2017-1202457742/

CHAPTER 8

Oscar Campaigns

Abstract  This chapter discusses the strategies and tactics that have been utilized by studios and filmmakers to promote their movies for the Academy Awards. It includes the effectiveness of these campaigns, the amount of money spent and the return on investment. It also includes the suspicious circumstances attributed to negative campaigns. Keywords  Movies • Best Picture • Oscar campaigns • Value of an Oscar • Whisper campaigns • Bayes’ Rule • Predictability • Directors Guild of America • Producers Guild of America • Screens Actors Guild In 1999, Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan was the favorite to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. However, that year, Shakespeare in Love won instead and with it began a significant change in the way movies were marketed to Academy voters. Saving Private Ryan had already been in the theaters for five months and earned over $480 million worldwide before Shakespeare in Love’s limited release on December 11, 1998 (Keegan and Sperling 2017). So how did a fictional Shakespearean romance by a relatively unknown director best a nonfictional World War II drama by one of the most revered directors in Hollywood? Many people believe that this was due to an aggressive campaign orchestrated by Harvey Weinstein, the now disgraced former head of the entertainment company Miramax that produced the film. © The Author(s) 2020 O. Eagan, Oscar Buzz and the Influence of Word of Mouth on Movie Success, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41180-0_8

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He cofounded the company with his brother Bob which they named after their parents, Miriam and Max (Faughnder 2017). Bob would later publicly condemn his brother’s behavior in the wake of numerous sexual harassment and assault accusations. He even urged his removal from the film academy and arranged for his removal from the company they cofounded (Faughnder 2017). Weinstein’s legacy also includes being credited with launching a cottage industry through the campaign tactics he employed for Shakespeare in Love. For instance, industry insiders say that during the Shakespeare in Love campaign, Weinstein pressured his movie talent to participate in an unprecedented number of press events (Keegan and Sperling 2017). He also resorted to negative campaigning, trying to convince Academy voters that Saving Private Ryan was essentially the first 15 minutes of the film (Keegan and Sperling 2017). However, there are some who lament that Shakespeare in Love is remembered this way. After all, the movie secured 13 Oscar nominations that year and is among the top ten movies with the most nominations (Pennington 2019). Although, Mark Gill, the President of Miramax in Los Angeles at the time, said that despite the film being great and the individual achievements being  remarkable, you could never look at the film through the same lens (Keegan and Sperling 2017). Until closing its doors in January of 2010, no other company had as much Oscar success in such a short period of time (Pond 2010). The company, which originally specialized in producing indie films, was founded by Harvey and Bob Weinstein in 1979 and was purchased by Disney in 2003 (McNary and Graser 2010). Its first major success was Sex, Lies, & Videotape in 1989, which was directed by Steven Soderbergh. The movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and is credited with transforming both the festival and independent film due to its success. Produced for $1.2 million, it eventually earned $24.7 million at the domestic box office and had the largest VHS independent film release (Nicholson 2019). Miramax would become the most aggressive campaigner in the 1990s and hired consultants to assist them in their efforts (Pond 2010). In 1994, they secured 22 Oscar nominations which was 12 more than Disney, their parent company, and 5 more than Paramount, the studio with the second most nominations. This included four of the five nominees in both the Best Supporting Actress and the Best Original Screenplay categories and three of the five in the Best Director category (Pond 2010).

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In 1996, Miramax would win Best Picture for The English Patient and, in 1997, its film Good Will Hunting would lose to James Cameron’s Titanic. However, campaigning reached new levels in 1998 when Miramax and DreamWorks were rumored to have spent about $15 million to promote Shakespeare in Love and Saving Private Ryan, respectively (Pond 2010). The two companies would face each other again the following year when Miramax’s The Cider House Rules and DreamWorks’ American Beauty were nominated for Best Picture. They spent so much money that year that Billy Crystal, the host of the Academy Awards, referred to their campaign in one of his jokes (Pond 2010). After a number of Oscar statuettes had gone missing that year, Crystal said, “Willie got $50,000 for finding the 52 Oscars. Not a lot of money when you realize that Miramax and DreamWorks are spending millions of dollars just to get one” (Pond 2010). In addition to Best Picture awards for The English Patient in 1996 and Shakespeare in Love in 1998, Weinstein would go on to win for Chicago in 2002 with Miramax and then The King’s Speech in 2010 and The Artist in 2011 with The Weinstein Company (Cain 2017). Before his expulsion from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in October 2017, Weinstein had been nominated for 381 awards and had won 81 for movies produced or distributed through Miramax or The Weinstein Company. He was also nominated twice and would win Best Picture as a producer for Shakespeare in Love (Berg 2017). Most of these nominations and wins were the result of aggressive campaigns. But the campaign strategies and tactics he developed would soon be replicated by others. These methods included special screenings and events for Academy members, whisper campaigns and cold calls (Fox 2014). Weinstein’s campaigning reportedly began with the movie My Left Foot in 1990. According to Weinstein, in those days, the studios dominated the Oscars because none of the indies campaigned aggressively (Fox 2014). Therefore, he did everything he could to ensure that Academy voters saw his film, including hosting a screening of the movie at The Motion Picture Retirement Home (Fox 2014). His tactics were sometimes unsavory as well. However, like many negative campaigns, most of them couldn’t be proven. For instance, when it was alleged that the filmmakers of the Oscar favorite Slumdog Millionaire had exploited Indian child actors, many people assumed that Weinstein was responsible. However, he responded by saying, “When you’re Billy

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the Kid and people around you die of natural causes, everyone thinks you shot them” (Fox 2014). Today, Oscar campaigns have become commonplace. Exactly how much money is spent is a well-kept secret but Stephen Follows, a London-­ based writer, producer and data researcher in the film industry, was able to obtain data for four films nominated for Best Picture between 2011 and 2014. They were provided to him on the condition that the films and studios remain anonymous (Heyman 2015). Though not a representative sample, this data does provide us with a rare glimpse at actual campaign spending figures. He discovered that the total cost of the campaigns for these movies ranged from $5.3 million to $8.3 million. Most of the money, $3.5 million on average, was spent on ads in trade publications and union magazines. Other significant costs consisted of sending DVD screeners to Academy voters, hosting screenings and sending nominated actors and directors to promotional events (Heyman 2015). In addition, sources told Variety magazine that campaigns in 2015 ranged from $3 million for smaller studios to $10 million for major studios (Lang and Seetodeh 2016). Despite the amount of money Hollywood spends on these campaigns, which has been estimated to range from $100 million to $500 million, Follows says most of the return on investment is limited to prestige that can be leveraged for future projects (Heyman 2015). For instance, even though movie producers spend millions more on Oscar campaigns than on Golden Globe campaigns, industry analyst Edmund Helmer found that a Golden Globe win actually generates more revenue than an Oscar win. Specifically, he conducted a study in 2013 that estimated the value of an Oscar win at $3 million and a Golden Globe win at $14.2 million for movies released over the previous 12  years (Helmer 2013). Helmer attributed this to the timing of the Golden Globes since they are earlier in a film’s lifecycle. He also argued that because they are essentially trial runs for the Oscars they tend to generate significant free press (Helmer 2013). However, it’s important to note that this study pertained to the average outcomes of all Golden Globe and Oscar winners. The results are quite different for individual awards. Helmer conducted another study to estimate the value of an Oscar. For example, he found that the average film released from 2000 to 2009 earned about $19 million domestically while the average film with at least

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one Oscar nomination made about $73 million. He also found that the average film with a Best Picture nomination made about $109 million and that the average film with Best Picture win made about $143 million (Helmer 2011). However, Helmer also wanted to estimate the value of an “Oscar bump”—that is, the amount of money a film could earn directly due to winning an Academy Award for Best Picture. He discovered that this amount was $14 million (Helmer 2011). In addition, an IBISWorld study that analyzed movies from 2006 through 2010 found that an Oscar bump was an average of $20.3 million for a Best Picture nominee and $14.0 million for a Best Picture winner (Rocheleau 2016). Another study by IBISWorld found that movies nominated for Best Picture between 2008 and 2012 had an average budget of $56.7 million and average box office sales of $127.7 million. This 55.7 percent profit is even more significant when compared to the average profit of only 7.5 percent for the movie and video production industry as a whole including post-box office, DVD and streaming sales (Rocheleau 2016). This study also revealed that low-budget films benefit more proportionally from an Oscar nomination or win. For instance, when the movie Silver Linings Playbook was nominated in 2012 “the number of theaters screening the movie more than tripled” according to the report. Further, the report stated, “Although the film was in theaters for more than six months, over half its ticket sales were made in the six weeks between its nomination and the Academy Awards ceremony” (Rocheleau 2016). There is other evidence that Oscar campaigns can influence outcomes, not only for Best Picture but for Best Actress and Actor as well. One case study involves Marion Cotillard, who moved from France to Los Angeles to campaign for the 2007 film La Vie en Rose in which she played the chanteuse Edith Piaf (Stanley 2016). According to David Karger, an awards expert, her performance was phenomenal but her campaigning made the difference in her win for Best Actress because no one knew who she was (Stanley 2016). Another case study involves Eddie Redmayne, who aggressively campaigned for his Best Actor win as physicist Stephen Hawking. His win is also credited with boosting the movie’s box office performance past $122 million worldwide despite its modest budget of $15 million (Stanley 2016). An academic study published in 2001 found that nominations and awards for “top” prizes such as Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Actress had “a positive impact on a film’s probability of survival, its market share

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of screens, and the average revenue per screen.” However, this study found that nominations and awards for “lesser” awards such as Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress had “little if any impact on these variables” (Nelson et al. 2001). Specifically, this study found that nominations for Best Supporting Actor/Actress, Best Actor/Actress and Best Picture generated respective box office increases of $147,131, $476,617 and $4,799,118. However, the award in each of these categories translated to $1,612,939, $4,035,023 and $12,690,035, respectively (Nelson et al. 2001). Philip DeFranco of The Philip DeFranco Show, a pop culture and news series on YouTube, along with Elissa Chojnicki, an Associate Producer, developed a news segment about Oscar campaigns entitled “And the Oscar Goes to… How $$$ and Insane Campaigns Dictate Who Wins Big!” (DeFranco 2019). In their segment, they explored the history of these campaigns and consulted with industry heavyweights Pete Hammond, the Awards Columnist and Chief Film Critic at Deadline Hollywood, and Tim Gray, the Awards Editor and Senior Vice President at Variety. They discussed genres that were favored by the Academy through the years. For instance, in the 1970s it was “criminals and illegal dealings.” In the 1980s, it was “big, dramatic films set in far-away places.” And, as Pete and Tim agreed, the trend within the last decade has been toward art-­ house movies. Ironically, these are smaller, independent movies that the studios were reluctant to produce in the first place (DeFranco 2019). DeFranco and Chojnicki then explored the role of PR consultants in campaigns. Traditionally, these campaigns consist of print ads and billboards, screeners which are sent to Academy members and screenings where movie stars will often appear to promote their films. However, they can also include whisper campaigns. Since the Academy has rules to prevent filmmakers from actively campaigning against their competitors, some PR consultants resort to quietly spreading rumors instead (DeFranco 2019). For instance, in 2018 a lawsuit was filed ten days before the Academy Awards that alleged that the plot of The Shape of Water was stolen from a play. The Director Guillermo Del Toro stated he had never even heard of the play and a judge eventually dismissed the suit (DeFranco 2019). When the movie Zero Dark Thirty was being considered for Best Picture in 2013, the US Senate Intelligence Committee opened an investigation about a month before the Academy Awards to investigate whether the

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filmmakers received classified materials. Specifically, they wanted to know whether the CIA had shared sensitive information with the movie’s director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal. They also wanted to know whether CIA officials were responsible for the portrayal of controversial interrogation techniques that led to the killing of Osama Bin Laden (DeFranco 2019). The investigation created significant media attention and the movie ended up losing the Best Picture contest to Argo. Suspiciously, the US Senate Intelligence Committee dropped the investigation the day after the Academy Awards. As suspicious as it was, it was never proven that any competitors had pulled any strings with their Washington DC connections (DeFranco 2019). While whisper campaigns are fairly common, only once was somebody sanctioned by the Academy. The infraction involved several emails that Pete Hammond discovered from Nicolas Chartier, the producer of the movie The Hurt Locker. In them, Chartier was explicitly urging Academy members to support his film over Avatar. As a result, the Academy banned Chartier from the ceremony. However, The Hurt Locker would, nevertheless, win Best Picture and Chartier would eventually receive his Academy Award (DeFranco 2019). In 2019, Oscar campaigning was taken to new heights as Netflix promoted Roma for Best Picture. First, the company hired Lisa Taback, a veteran awards consultant, who was described by Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer, as “the best of the best” (Barnes 2019). Taback began her career in the 1990s with Miramax and worked on the campaigns for Pulp Fiction and Shakespeare in Love. She launched her own company, LTLA Communications, in 1999 and her other noteworthy Oscar campaigns included the Best Picture winners The King’s Speech, The Artist, Chicago and Spotlight. She would later bring her entire LTLA Communications team with her to Netflix (Barnes 2019). Her hiring sent shockwaves through the industry as it both gave Netflix a competitive advantage and took one of the best consultants off the market. Netflix would go on to spend lavishly on promoting Roma, including a “‘Roma’ Experience Day.” This event consisted of the company renting two sound stages at a historic movie lot with a museum-style exhibit of Roma costumes and panel discussions with director Alfonso Cuarón and the crew (Barnes 2019). It was estimated that Netflix spent $25 million to $30 million on its campaign for the black-and-white film based on a domestic worker in

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Mexico which cost just $15 million to produce (Barnes 2019). Roma would go on to win Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film, Best Director and Best Cinematography but would lose Best Picture to Green Book. Despite its win, Green Book was subject to several controversies which some people attribute to a whisper campaign. First, in September 2018, Viggo Mortenson, who plays Tony Vallelonga, the Italian-American chauffeur who drives the black piano prodigy Don Shirley through the South on tour in the 1960s, used the n-word at a post-screening panel discussion. It should be noted that according to several audience members in attendance, Mortenson used the word as an example of unacceptable language that was more common when the movie takes place. He also issued an apology for his use of the word regardless of his intent (Donnelly and Woerner 2018). Then, the Shirley family denounced the film in November 2018, saying the movie was “full of lies.” For instance, family members disputed such details as Vallelonga introducing Shirley to fried chicken and Little Richard’s music. They also took exception to the depictions of Shirley being detached from his family and the black community. In response, Nick Vallelonga, the son of Tony Vallelonga, and Peter Farrelly, the director, focused instead on the story being true from Tony’s perspective and the audio tapes on which the film was based (Jones 2019). The most curious controversies were the two that emerged the day the film won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture—Musical or Comedy. One involved the reemergence of stories about director Peter Farrelly exposing himself in the workplace. The other involved Nick Vallelonga who had agreed with an unsubstantiated tweet from then-presidential candidate Donald Trump that New Jersey Muslims were seen celebrating after the terrorist attack on 9/11. These were both serious indiscretions but the timing of these stories was certainly suspicious (Jones 2019). There have been some protests about the amount of money that is spent on Oscar campaigns. For instance, during a Variety panel discussion at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016, Susan Sarandon stated that the industry needed “campaign finance reform” to level the playing field (Lang 2016). However, these types of protests are few and far between. In the midst of these campaigns, there are other indicators that can help us predict the eventual winners. For instance, other industry awards are thought to be good predictors of success when it comes to the Academy Award for Best Picture.

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As an illustration, the winner of the Directors Guild of America (DGA) award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement has predicted the Oscar for Best Picture 14 out of the last 20 years for a success rate of 70 percent. The Producers Guild of America (PGA) award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures has represented 13 out of the last 20 Best Picture winners for a 65 percent success rate. And, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture has predicted 10 of 20, or 50 percent, of Oscar winners. With these success rates, we can use Bayes’ Rule to estimate the conditional probability of a movie winning the Academy Award for Best Picture in light of other awards it has garnered. The DGA, PGA and SAG awards are issued closely together in January with typically the PGA award being issued first, the SAG award second and the DGA award third. Therefore, we can use Bayes’ Rule to determine the probability of a movie winning Best Picture if it were to win both the PGA and the SAG awards. Because the PGA award is usually issued before the SAG award, we can use the PGA award as the prior probability and the SAG award as the posterior probability. To that end, the following formula represents the prior probability of event A as Pr[A] and the posterior probability of A given B as Pr[A | B]. Pr [ A| B ] =

Pr[ A] × Pr[ B| A] Pr[ B ]



This time, we’ll substitute PGA for A and SAG for B. We’ll also use S as successful and U as unsuccessful. So, to determine the value of Pr[PGA = S | SAG = S], we use the formula below. Pr [ PGA = S | SAG = S ] =

Pr [ PGA = S ] × Pr[ SAG = S | PGA = S ] Pr[ SAG = S ]



Using the PGA rating, we know that the prior probability of success, or Pr [PGA = S], is 0.65. We also know that Pr [SAG = S | PGA = S] is 0.50 in light of the SAG success rate. As previously discussed, there are two possible outcomes for a movie winning an Academy Award for Best Picture. Specifically, a movie can be actually successful or actually unsuccessful. Hence, we use the following equation to determine the probability of a movie being successful.

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Pr [ PGA = S ] × Pr [ SAG = S | PGA = S ] = 0.65 × 0.50 = 0.325



And, to determine the probability of a movie being unsuccessful, we use the following formula.

Pr [ PGA = U ] × Pr [ SAG = S | PGA = U ] = 0.35 × 0.50 = 0.175



The probability of a successful outcome is determined by summing these probabilities.



Pr [ SAG = S ] = Pr [ PGA = S ] × Pr [ SAG = S | PGA = S ] + Pr [ PGA = U ] × Pr [ SAG = S | PGA = U ] = 0.65 × 0.50 + 0.35 × 0.50 = 0.50 We then insert these figures into our equation as follows. Pr [ PGA = S | SAG = S ] =

Pr [ PGA = S ] × Pr[ SAG = S | PGA = S ]

0.65 × 0.50 0.50 = 0.65

Pr[ SAG = S ]

=



These results indicate that if movie wins both a PGA award and an SAG award, its chances of winning an Oscar for Best Picture are 65 percent. We can then use this number as the prior probability if a movie also wins the DGA award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement. Since the success rate of the DGA award is 70 percent, we would use 0.70 as the posterior probability. If we plug these numbers into the Bayes formula, we would get 0.81 or 81 percent. This would mean that there is a significantly higher chance of a film winning an Academy Award for Best Picture if it wins the PGA, SAG and DGA awards. In fact, the movie that won both the PGA and SAG awards over the last 20 years won eight out of nine times. By comparison, the movie that won the PGA, SAG and DGA awards over that same period won eight out of eight times.

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It should be noted that if a film wins the PGA and DGA awards without the SAG awards, it would still yield a conditional probability of 0.81 percent. As a case in point, these movies have won 11 out of 14 times during that timeframe. Thus, the combination of these industry awards are very good bellwethers.

References Barnes, Brooks. 2019. In Bid to Conquer Oscars, Netflix Mobilizes Savvy Campaigner and Huge Budget. The New York Times. February 17. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/business/media/netflix-movies-oscars.html Berg, Madeline. 2017. After Expulsion From The Academy, Here Are All Of Harvey Weinstein’s 81 Oscar Wins. Forbes. October 13. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2017/10/13/here-are-all-ofharvey-weinsteins-oscar-wins/#338bee7cd946 Cain, Rob. 2017. The Weinstein Company Can Kiss Its Oscar Prospects Goodbye. Forbes, October 12. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/robcain/2017/10/12/weinstein-company-can-kiss-its-oscar-prospectsgoodbye/#7b04cf7958e3 DeFranco, Philip. 2019. And The Oscar Goes To… How $$$ and Insane Campaigns Dictate Who Wins Big! The Philip DeFranco Show. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wILkUIzh1Jo Donnelly, Matt, and Meredith Woerner. 2018. Viggo Mortensen Apologizes for Using N-Word at ‘Green Book’ Panel. Variety. November 9. Retrieved from https://variety.com/2018/film/news/viggo-mortensen-n-word-greenbook-1203024519/ Faughnder, Ryan. 2017. It Was Bob and Harvey Weinstein Against the World. Then Then Turned On Each Other. Los Angeles Times, October 18. Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-bob-weinstein20171018-story.html Fox, Jesse David. 2014. A Brief History of Harvey Weinstein’s Oscar Campaign Tactics. Vulture, January 29. Retrieved from https://www.vulture. com/2014/01/miramax-oscar-campaigns-harvey-weinstein-timeline.html Helmer, Edmund. 2011. The Value of an Oscar. BoxOfficeQuant.com, February 27. Retrieved from http://boxofficequant.com/the-value-of-an-oscar ———. 2013. Golden Globe Win Worth Millions More than Oscar Victory. Reuters, January 15. Retrieved from http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2013/01/15/golden-globe-films-are-worth-millions-more-thanoscar-winners

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Heyman, Stephen. 2015. There’s More to Winning an Oscar Than Meets the Eye. The New  York Times, January 28. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes. com/2015/01/29/arts/international/theres-more-to-winning-an-oscarthan-meets-the-eye.html Jones, Marcus. 2019. Here Are All The ‘Green Book’ Controversies From This Awards Season. BuzzFeed, January 12. Retrieved from https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/marcusjones/green-book-controversies-timeline Keegan, Rebecca, and Nicole Sperling. 2017. Shakespeare in Love and Harvey Weinstein’s Dark Oscar Victory. Vanity Fair, December 8. Retrieved from https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/12/shakespeare-in-love-andharvey-weinsteins-dark-oscar-victory Lang, Brent. 2016. Susan Sarandon: Oscar Campaigns Are Out of Control. Variety, May 15. Retrieved from https://variety.com/2016/film/marketsfestivals/susan-sarandon-oscars-1201775223/ Lang, Brent, and Ramin Seetodeh. 2016. A Breakdown of the ‘Outrageous’ Costs of 2015’s Oscar Campaigns. Variety, January 20. Retrieved from https://variety.com/2016/film/awards/oscar-campaigns-cost-leonardo-dicaprio1201682447/ McNary, Dave, and Mark Graser. 2010. Indie Film Great Miramax Shutters. Variety, January 28. Retrieved from https://variety.com/2010/film/features/indie-film-great-miramax-shutters-1118014433/ Nelson, Randy A., Michael R.  Donihue, Donald M.  Waldman, and Calbraith Wheaton. 2001. What’s an Oscar Worth? Economic Inquiry 39(1), January. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227920391_ What’s_an_Oscar_Worth Nicholson, Amy. 2019. A Film Career Built on Videotape (Sex and Lies, Too). The New  York Times, August 22. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes. com/2019/08/22/movies/sex-lies-and-videotape-steven-soderbergh.html Pennington, Susan. 2019. Oscars 20th Anniversary Flashback: ‘Shakespeare in Love’ Shockingly Beats ‘Saving Private Ryan’ for Best Picture. Gold Derby, January 24. Retrieved from https://www.goldderby.com/article/2019/ oscars-20th-anniversary-flashback-shakespeare-in-love-saving-private-ryanbest-picture/ Pond, Steve. 2010. Farewell, Miramax: Oscar Will Never Be the Same. The Wrap, January 28. Retrieved from https://www.thewrap.com/farewell-miramaxoscar-will-never-be-same-13639/ Rocheleau, Matt. 2016. Oscar Nominations Often Lead to Boost in Movie Revenues. The Boston Globe, January 14. Retrieved from https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/01/14/oscar-nominations-often-lead-boost-movierevenues/5w5uj8N5n2sywyN1LPCR1K/story.html Stanley, T.L. 2016. Inside the Relentless Marketing Push Behind Every Oscar Winner. Adweek, February 21. Retrieved from https://www.adweek.com/ brand-marketing/inside-relentless-marketing-push-behind-every-oscar-winner-169776/

CHAPTER 9

Insights from the Experts

Abstract  This chapter provides insights from experts in the industry on most of the topics covered in earlier chapters. For instance, these experts offer a more qualitative perspective on the quantitative analyses that we explored. Also, they shed light on what each of them believes makes a great movie and in the process demonstrate how the opinions of experts can strongly differ with both each other and audiences as well. Keywords  Movies • Movie experts • Favorite movies • Great movies • Film critics • Oscar buzz After all of our quantitative analysis, I wanted to also provide some qualitative insights from experts in the entertainment industry. To that end, I consulted with a number of leaders in the field. I found this discussion fascinating for several reasons. First, as any business executive will tell you, the numbers don’t always tell you the whole story. That is, they always need to be given further context and interpretation. Second, I not only found their opinions enthralling but I was also intrigued by how different their perspectives could be from each other and from audiences in general. As you’ll see, despite the fact that Green Book and Spotlight were Best Picture winners, they weren’t universally lauded among our experts. However, this allows us to understand how subjective movies can be, and how strongly and widely opinions can vary. © The Author(s) 2020 O. Eagan, Oscar Buzz and the Influence of Word of Mouth on Movie Success, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41180-0_9

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I began by consulting Tim Gray, the Awards Editor and a Senior Vice President of Variety magazine. Founded in 1905 as a weekly newspaper that covered the theater and vaudeville, Variety is recognized as a leading entertainment news publication by influencers in the industry. He started at Variety in 1981 and has held numerous posts over the years. For instance, he oversaw January 2013’s 80-page special report on entertainment and violence, which featured more than 40 representatives of various fields weighing in on the many aspects of violence. Tim counts this as one of the hardest, and most rewarding, things he’s ever done during his tenure at Variety (Gray 2019). He is also the author of the books Variety: An Illustrated History of the World from the Most Important Magazine in Hollywood and the Hollywood Dictionary, and is a co-author of Cannes: 50 Years of Sun, Sex & Celluloid. In addition, he was co-producer of the HBO documentary Boffo!: Tinseltown’s Bombs & Blockbusters, which we discussed in Chap. 3 (Gray 2019). I asked Tim what his earliest memory of going to the movies was and how that impacted him. He said that his first memory was going to see a Cinerama movie with his parents. They were so excited, and their excitement was contagious. So, all through his childhood, going to the movies was a special event (Gray 2019). His all-time favorite movie changes from day to day, depending on his mood. At the time of our interview, his favorite was Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. According to Tim, it’s beautiful and haunting, and he thinks about its themes often. He added that its storytelling is quietly radical. Other favorites of his include Lawrence of Arabia, 8½ and 2001: A Space Odyssey for the same reasons (Gray 2019). He said that his least favorite movie is Spotlight. He stated that every movie sends a message about how the world works, whether or not the filmmakers realize how political their film is. He found Spotlight to be short-sighted and possibly damaging. To him, if you watch this movie, you conclude that every Catholic priest is a child-molester, and every molester is a priest. So, if the filmmakers were trying to sound a warning, they’re misleading parents by implying that a child is safe around every other adult. And it’s insulting to the vast majority of clerics (of all faiths), who do good work. He argues that Spotlight is trying to be hard-hitting and honest, but it’s actually narrow-vision propaganda (Gray 2019).

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Given his favorite and least favorite movies, I asked Tim what makes a great movie. He responded by saying that he thinks a great movie is one that touches you and makes you think (Gray 2019). I also asked him who and/or what were his inspirations for pursuing a career in the entertainment industry. His response was mostly about writing and storytelling. He replied, “My biggest inspiration was Anton Chekhov, the Russian playwright and author. His plays seem very simple, but they cover every human emotion. He also made it look so easy. Therefore, the older I get, the more I appreciate Shakespeare and the Greek playwrights” (Gray 2019). Since he is a leading voice in the industry, I asked Tim how much he thought that film critics influence audiences. He said that he thinks for big populist films, critics don’t matter. Audiences will go see a Marvel or DC blockbuster or a horror movie no matter what the critics say. However, he said critics are important in helping to build buzz for films that are hard to describe in one sentence, that do not fit into an easy genre or that make an audience work by not providing easy answers (Gray 2019). I further asked him why he believed critics were essential and why not having enough diversity among them mattered. He believes that critics can be important because they guide audiences, and also provide notes to the filmmakers about what works, what doesn’t and why. However, he always thought critics should spend two years at their job, then take a year’s sabbatical and do manual labor and only see movies at multiplexes with paying audiences (Gray 2019). He elaborated, “I used to review for Variety and backed away from that job when I realized I was falling in love with the sound of my own voice. That is, I felt my opinions were somehow more valid than other people’s. I felt that was a dangerous mindset for a critic” (Gray 2019). “Critics spend a lot of time talking with other critics and live in a specialized world,” he added. “They get into an auteur mindset and want every director’s film to be somehow greater than his/her last film, and they compare filmmaking techniques on a romantic comedy to Citizen Kane. They sometimes write about the film they would have preferred to see, instead of the film that the moviemakers wanted to make. That’s unfair to the filmmakers and to readers” (Gray 2019). In 2018, he said that Green Book got good reviews, but a few critics were relentlessly mean. He finally wrote a column and said, “Lighten up. This film wasn’t made for you” and critics often forget that. In regard to diversity among film critics, he noted its importance but said that emphasis

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should first be placed on promoting diversity among writers, producers and directors, who can voice life experiences that haven’t been seen before (Gray 2019). Moving away from film criticism, I wanted to get Tim’s insights on the business of filmmaking. To that end, I asked him about the role of film festivals in this process. He said that every film festival director wants to discover new talent but that it’s really hard. “When you look at the number of filmmakers who apply to Sundance, for example, you realize only a fraction are accepted,” said Tim. “And even the official entries often don’t find distribution. Many of the Palme d’Or winners at the Cannes Film Festival never found US distribution. In the best of all worlds, a film festival is a great showcase. At their worst, they’re a reminder that a career in filmmaking is never easy” (Gray 2019). I know that movies are personal and subjective but I asked him if he believed there was a formula for movie success. He said that if there were, every movie would be a huge hit. He added that the 2006 HBO documentary Boffo!, on which he served as an associate producer, addressed this question with Hollywood veterans. Sydney Pollack summed it up by saying, “I’ve made big hits and terrible flops, and I still don’t know the difference.” Every movie is made with high hopes. And some just miss the mark, and some surpass expectations, and nobody knows why (Gray 2019). That said, he believes that there are early indicators to predict a film’s success. In fact, he has a few gauges in January, a month or two before the ceremony, though he keeps his bellwethers a secret. He stated, “The situation is muddied by too many people proclaiming Oscar potential more than a year in advance. In 2010, one awards blogger saw The King’s Speech in Telluride in August, and predicted that it would win the Oscar. He was right” (Gray 2019). “But ever since then, the editor of the site has demanded that he proclaim a winner every year at Telluride, and other bloggers started doing the same and the results are often silly. A few years ago, some bloggers predicted The Revenant would sweep the Oscars, before they’d even seen the trailer, just based on photos that were on the Internet” (Gray 2019). “With the 2018 Hereditary, some pundits were proclaiming Toni Collette as a best actress winner, from January’s Sundance Festival through its June opening in North America. But by the end of the year, so many other films had opened that Collette was a no-show. These early p ­ redictions are a disservice to the actors and filmmakers by setting up expectations” (Gray 2019).

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In light of these early attempts at predictions, I asked Tim what he felt were the best ways of building Oscar buzz. He said that it usually starts with the studio and often starts even before production begins. “There are ‘prestige’ productions. And every studio woos a list of ‘influencers’ or people who can spread word of mouth,” he said. “In the last decade or two, the fall film festivals have been crucial in building buzz, through media attendees and other industry folks at the festivals. But like building buzz for a film’s box office opening, awards buzz either catches fire or it doesn’t” (Gray 2019). “A few years ago, Universal put all its advance hopes behind Steve Jobs, but the film just didn’t click. So, they transferred their awards attention to Straight Outta Compton. The same thing happened with Warner Bros. and the Johnny Depp film Black Mass. Warner Bros. executives were genuinely enthused, but audiences just shrugged. So, Warner Bros. put its muscle behind Mad Max: Fury Road, and the film ended up with six Oscars. Initially, Fury Road seemed like a popcorn film, a crowd-pleaser, but not typical Oscar fodder. The lesson for Warner Bros. (and for every other studio) is that you can’t predict these things. You follow the formula and sometimes it works, but sometimes life is full of surprises” (Gray 2019). He added that every studio tries to build buzz for their movie. Universal in 2018 tried to build buzz for First Man, the story of Neil Armstrong, but it only worked a bit. A few years ago, Blumhouse and Universal sold Jordan Peele’s Get Out as a horror film when it opened since they needed that angle to get an audience. But more than six months later, aiming for awards, they wanted to get the message out “It’s not REALLY a horror film.” Said Tim, “I helped send that message. I wrote the first column, I think, saying that it’s a little Twilight Zone, a little The Graduate, but not a horror film. And it worked, with the film getting four Oscar nominations, including best picture and Peele nominated as director. Did my column influence other Oscar pundits, or Oscar voters? I have no idea” (Gray 2019). I then asked Tim whether any of the industry awards serve as predictors of Oscar success. He said that the guild awards offer clues, but there are no surefire predictors. “The awards-season handouts begin in early December with critics’ awards,” he stated. “Those are clues but unreliable bellwethers. For one thing, most critics see 5–20 films in a week, so they are exposed to more

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awards-caliber work. And there are no critics in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.” “The guilds have many members in the Academy, but it’s varied. Sometimes people are surprised when a film wins one guild’s top honor, but not the Oscar. In the past five years, the Producers Guild of America and the Oscar picked the same best picture three out of five times. So that’s a good track record, but not perfect” (Gray 2019). I also wanted to know to what extent studios and filmmakers could influence this process through awards campaigns. That is, as we discussed in Chap. 8, some studios and filmmakers spend millions of dollars to promote their movies among Academy voters. So, I asked Tim what the average cost of a campaign was and how much of a difference he thought they made. He responded, “There is no ‘average cost’ of a campaign, because a small company like Sony Pictures Classics will spend modestly on The Wife, though they will tap into their experience and contacts with awards bloggers and writers. In 2018, rivals claimed Netflix had spent $50 million on Roma. It earned three Academy Awards. In 2003, Harvey Weinstein in Cannes said that he’d spent $10 million on the Oscar campaign for Chicago, and in the weeks after nominations were announced, it earned more than $80 million at the domestic box office, and a similar amount overseas. Weinstein stated, ‘Was I overspending or was I just making a smart investment?’” (Gray 2019). I also asked Tim about the importance of momentum. He said that it’s all about timing. When A Star Is Born (2018) played at fall film festivals, then opened domestically in October, people were rapturous. If Oscar voting were held in October, it would have swept the awards. But by the time the Oscar ceremony was held on February 24, the passion had cooled, and it was caught in a backlash (“Eh, it wasn’t THAT great”). On the other hand, Green Book was the Little Engine That Could, persisting despite frequent attacks (which he believes were organized) (Gray 2019). My next question for Tim was how much of Academy voting he thought was based on personal experience and how much was a result of influence, momentum, marketing spend, and so on. He said that he thinks Academy voters honestly vote for their favorites. The media loves to talk about campaign spending. And the Academy takes all of this worry a little too seriously (Gray 2019). For instance, Tim said, “After Harvey Weinstein staged numerous dinner parties ‘in honor of’ his film The King’s Speech and the film won best

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picture, the Academy put a limit on the number of parties a studio can hold. Do they honestly think voters thought ‘I didn’t like the film but the food was so delicious, I have to vote for it’? I think voters are more responsible than that” (Gray 2019). In the past few years, he said that he wrote columns touting the virtue of several movies, such as Mad Max: Fury Road and Green Book, which came out during voting. Consequently, he said, “I don’t believe my columns changed anyone’s mind. But I like to think they gave people permission to follow their conscience. I was basically saying, ‘If you liked this film, vote for it. It’s not a wasted vote, it’s a worthy Oscar winner.’ But I doubt if anyone voted for those films solely on the basis of my columns” (Gray 2019). I inquired about how much influence Tim thought the preferential ballot had on the Academy Award for Best Picture. For those who aren’t aware, this system involves having Academy voters rank all of the films from best to worst. If no film secures more than 50 percent, then the film with the least amount of votes is eliminated and its ballots are redistributed based on voters’ second choice. This process continues until a film secures 50 percent of the votes (Feinberg 2019). This process was implemented by the Academy in 2009 to ensure that the Best Picture winner is the most widely liked. As Ric Robertson, who was the Academy’s Chief Operating Officer in 2009, stated, “Otherwise, you might end up with a movie that, say, 25% of the people love and the rest can’t stand” (Whipp 2018). In response to this question, Tim said, “I would love to know the answer. The Academy never gives results. But it would be fascinating to find out how many people put Green Book in first place, and how many people ranked it second. And how did Roma or The Favourite do? We’ll never know. Some Oscar pundits are convinced that the preferential ballot has skewed the results, but I have no idea.” After my interview with Tim, I then consulted Pete Hammond. Pete is the Chief Film Critic and Awards Columnist for Deadline Hollywood, and is widely considered to be one of the preeminent awards season commentators for film and television. Deadline Hollywood began in 2006 as the online version of Nikki Finke’s long-running LA Weekly “Deadline Hollywood” print column (Hammond 2019). He also hosts the classic film series “Must See Movies” every Friday night and Saturday afternoon on KCET, a PBS member television station located in Los Angeles. Before joining Deadline, Pete was a regular

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c­ ontributing awards columnist for the online and print editions of the Los Angeles Times/The Envelope, where he wrote the “Notes on a Season” blog for four years. He was also a film critic for Maxim Magazine/Maxim Online and Hollywood.com. In addition, he is the recipient of five Emmy nominations for his own television writing and is the winner of the 2013 and 1996 Publicists Guild of America’s Press Award, making him the second person to ever win this award twice in the guild’s 50-year history (Hammond 2019). I first asked Pete what attracted him to this profession. He said that he was obsessed with movies at a very early age. “I don’t know what the spark was but there is a photo of me at 7 years old cutting out movie ads out of the Los Angeles Times,” said Pete. “I would then use them to create a movie theater in my room. In fact, my mother said that I learned to read from the marquee of the Westwood Village Bruin Theater” (Hammond 2019). He didn’t know where the obsession came from, he just knew that he wanted to be in the business. So, he acted in high school and college, where he also studied radio and TV and minored in journalism. After college, he became a writer and started writing for kids’ shows and comedies (Hammond 2019). However, it wasn’t until a friend encouraged him to interview as a researcher for Rona Barrett’s show Television: Inside and Out due to his encyclopedic knowledge of the entertainment industry that he got his big break. The woman who interviewed him asked him a question that she said she asked everyone. The question was, “What was Richard Dreyfuss’s earliest television appearance?” (Hammond 2019). Pete responded by saying, “Well, the earliest one I can remember was an NBC show called ‘90 Bristol Court’ that was on in the early ‘60’s and he was in an episode called ‘Karen’” (Hammond 2019). She said, “Really? I’m going to run and tell our producer because we’re producing a show about Richard Dreyfuss now” (Hammond 2019). She then ran off but on her desk was a book called Total Television. So, he opened it up and looked up “90 Bristol Court” and at the end of the paragraph describing that show it said, “Known as Richard Dreyfuss’s first television appearance.” When she came back he said, “You know, it was kind of on your desk the whole time.” And, before he got home, he had that job (Hammond 2019). That was a short-lived show but from there he went to Entertainment Tonight where he ended up staying ten years and became the film producer there. It was there that he met Leonard Maltin which led to him serving

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as a contributing editor for his annual Movie Guide. Thereafter, he would hold a few more producing positions at The Arsenio Hall Show, Extra and Access Hollywood before developing his extensive career as a film critic (Hammond 2019). I was curious to know Pete’s favorite movie of all time. He responded by saying that he hates this question because it’s nearly impossible to compare films. So, he said that he would just say the first ones that come to mind (Hammond 2019). He stated that there were two and that they are both with Audrey Hepburn. One is Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the movie based on the Truman Capote novella, which he recognizes as a flawed movie. He has seen it a million times and each time he sees the flaws. However, there was something about it that connected with him (Hammond 2019). He also really likes a movie called Two for the Road for which Frederic Raphael received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. This movie influenced him in terms of its style and editing techniques. He thought it was ahead of its time and is a film that he could watch over and over (Hammond 2019). His least favorite movie of all time is any movie that wastes the time of the audience. He really believes in the theatrical experience and so he really prefers screening movies with audiences. However, when he sees a movie in a theater that doesn’t work, he’s often very forgiving as a film critic. His philosophy is, “Who is the audience, what was the intention of the filmmaker, and did they meet their objectives?” He doesn’t look at it as if he’s the king and that the court jester needs to please him (Hammond 2019). His favorite story about film criticism is when Jack Lemmon was in a movie called Alex & the Gypsy and he took Walter Matthau to see a sneak preview of the film in Santa Barbara. So, at the end of the movie Jack turned to Walter and said, “Well, what did you think of it?” And Walter said, “Get out of it” (Hammond 2019). As a film critic, Pete said that he’s different than a lot of others. He doesn’t typically agree with the general film criticism community. So, he’s been attacked right and left. He said that all you need to do is Google him and you’ll find that one guy from Chicago did it for years until he got drummed out of the business (Hammond 2019). He said, “I just ignore that stuff because I believe that as a film critic you’ve got to love movies. Therefore, I always try to find some good in each film. Although, there was a recent survey of film critics on the 10 best

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movies during the first six months of the year. There was one movie called Souvenir which I did a favor to the distributor by not reviewing it. I just really hated it. I hated the characters. I hated the script. And it was number two on the critics’ list” (Hammond 2019). “Number one was Us, the Jordan Peele movie which I felt was so far inferior to Get Out. I thought it was just a horror movie and in my review I said, ‘Boy, this looks really familiar.’ So, I looked it up and there was a very similar episode of The Twilight Zone years ago. And then I made the connection that Jordan is now hosting The Twilight Zone and that he probably got the kernel of this idea from that episode. His movie was different but it was the same basic idea” (Hammond 2019). As an aside, in an interview with Rolling Stone, Jordan Peele revealed that the movie Us was inspired by a Twilight Zone episode he saw as child called “Mirror Image” (Hiatt 2019). One of his favorite movies this year is The Last Black Man in San Francisco which is the only movie on this list he would agree with. He said that it’s beautifully made, has great acting and has a really talented director. He always gets excited when he discovers these movies. For example, he said that he was an early advocate for Green Book. In fact, all the critics on Gold Derby picked Roma to win Best Picture except for Tim Gray and him. He said that there is pressure for critics to jump on the bandwagon but you need to have the courage to say what you think. For instance, the best way to do this is to see a movie with an audience and see how they react. Today, he thinks there is a disconnect between critics and audiences, and either most critics are clueless to this fact or they don’t care, and they shouldn’t be doing this job if they don’t care (Hammond 2019). I then asked Pete what he thought made a great movie. He said that it’s something that knows exactly what it wants to be, why it exists and then goes about doing that. There are plenty of great movies but what makes them great is that their filmmakers had something to say or their films mean something to them. A great movie is going to move you or stay with you in some way (Hammond 2019). Another one of his favorite films this year is Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino. He said that it premiered at Cannes and that you could tell that this was really a passion project for him. He added that Tarantino knows movies but this was a love letter to Los Angeles more than anything else. But it was also unexpected because you think you know what you’re going to get and you don’t. And it’s original, which also makes a great movie (Hammond 2019).

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In response to my question about what he felt was the best determinant of a movie’s success, he answered by saying that it was word of mouth. He elaborated by providing me with the example of Green Book. He said that Universal was asked to distribute the film by Steven Spielberg, who was one of the producers, and loved the movie. However, they said they really didn’t know what they had. So, they invited him and about five other people to a screening of the movie to solicit their feedback (Hammond 2019). He told them that this movie was going to be a big hit from word of mouth because it was the kind of movie you don’t see anymore. They reluctantly took the film to the Toronto International Film Festival, where it was screened later in the week even after he had left. He was later told that the film received a standing ovation after its screening and it went on to win the audience award (Hammond 2019). Along with speaking to Pete, I also consulted Claudia Puig for her perspective on these questions. Though I interviewed her on the subject of film festivals, I also wanted her insights on other issues related to movies given her numerous achievements and the various hats she wears. She said that her earliest memory of going to the movies was seeing West Side Story at the age of five. She was in awe. She was living in Switzerland and her family had taken a trip to Paris, and that’s where she saw the movie. Her parents told her it was in a grand movie palace, but she doesn’t really remember that. She just remembers the experience of the big screen and losing herself in the story of the Jets and the Sharks, and Maria and Tony’s ill-fated love (Puig 2019). Later, when she reached young adulthood, she became acutely aware of all the whitewashing and the many non-Latinos playing Latinx roles made her cringe. She said, “As a Latina, it made my affection for the film rather uncomfortable, to say the least” (Puig 2019). I then asked her what I now know is a dreaded question for all movie lovers. In response to the “favorite movie” question, she confirmed that she hated this question since for most of the diehard cinephiles it’s really hard to narrow it down to one (Puig 2019). She said, “I tend to answer The Godfather, knowing people are seeking an answer. But my answer changes all the time. A couple years ago it was Moonlight. A decade before, it was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. In between, it was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Last year, all I could think or talk about was Roma. So, it depends when you ask me. I could give you my favorite of the year or a top 10 of all time, but one favorite movie is nearly impossible for me to answer” (Puig 2019).

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In regard to her least favorite movies, she said that she has quite a few movies that could qualify. But, at this time she said it would be Green Book. Said Claudia, “I thought it was facile, sloppy, clichéd, occasionally offensive and exceedingly formulaic, telling the story of a fascinating black artist from a very white male-centered perspective. Not only was it a bad and predictable movie, it was tone-deaf and ill-considered. There are a lot of other movies that I dislike intensely – most Adam Sandler comedies, for instance – but none that I feel as angered over as Green Book, and the fact that it won an Oscar for Best Picture is even more infuriating and wrong-­ headed” (Puig 2019). For her, what makes a great movie first and foremost is great writing. Without a good script, it doesn’t matter how strong the acting is or how nimble or artful the direction. The dialogue has to sound believable and the story has to be compelling. Once you have a great script, then a wise and insightful director is essential and good actors make a huge difference. Memorable cinematography, editing, production design, costuming and score are also very important (Puig 2019). In pursuing a career in the entertainment industry, Claudia said that her inspirations were her parents, who were both big movie lovers. Her mother loved classic American fare and would sit her down to watch the best movies of her era (Puig 2019). She was ten when she watched To Kill a Mockingbird on TV and she highlighted Gregory Peck’s performance. She read film critics assiduously and would quote them. Her father had a very adventurous taste and loved Fellini, Bunuel, de Sica, Bertolucci, Truffaut, and so on, and would take her to foreign films a lot when she was a young girl. She may have even been a bit too young to take in some of that fare and jokingly said that she could have been forever scarred for all she knows. Their love for cinema and her family discussions afterward definitely stoked her appetite for inventive, artful filmmaking. She said that the combination of both of their love of films has informed her passion for films (Puig 2019). On the issue of streaming services, she believes that they are already having a big impact. She thinks they are democratizing the world of films by making foreign, indie and challenging fare available at much more reasonable prices to people who live everywhere. If you’re someone who lives in a small town in the Midwest or elsewhere in the US you may not have an arthouse to play smaller, more intriguing movies nearby (Puig 2019). But thanks to Netflix and Amazon, she said that you can watch more challenging and inventive movies and a broader range of global cinema. So, she thinks that is a very positive influence that the streaming services

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are having on the film medium. On the downside, she stated that it means fewer people will see films on a big screen with an audience and some of the magic that comes with that communal experience will be lost. But she thinks the positive effects to democratize, diversify and expand global awareness outweigh the negative (Puig 2019). I asked Claudia how much she thought film critics influenced audiences. She said that from her nearly 20 years of experience as a film critic she would say that individual film critics don’t have as much influence as they once did. “There is no latter day Roger Ebert or Pauline Kael,” stated Claudia. “And while people are often telling me they diligently have read my reviews in USA Today, or listen to me currently on NPR’s Film Week, I believe the greatest influence of the critic is in the aggregate” (Puig 2019). She added, “I think collectively film critics do influence audiences, but individually not as much. People often consult the percentage of Fresh and Rotten scores on Rotten Tomatoes before choosing what film to see, rather than seeking out an individual review. But the links are there for people who want to read further. Also, the awards given out yearly by critics’ groups frequently lead to Oscar nominations and other awards so collectively critics have quite a deal of influence” (Puig 2019). She added that one of the most important aspects of the job of a film critic is being a film champion—finding every opportunity to encourage people to see a great film. Film organizations, like the one she leads—the Los Angeles Film Critics Association—can be avid and passionate champions for films and that is one of her most cherished roles (Puig 2019). I asked her why she felt film critics are essential and what the effect was of not having enough diversity among them. She replied that film critics are more essential than ever, given the plethora of content available not only in theaters, but online and via streaming services, cable and broadcast TV (Puig 2019). “There is so much to sift through that having a critic guide you to the best offerings is key,” said Claudia. “And having diversity among the ranks of critics is of utmost importance, in order to get a wide spectrum of critical thought and opinions to consider. If people want to make the most informed choice for their limited entertainment time, and dollar, they need to have the widest variety of perspectives possible available to them. And having a diverse body of critics, with a wide variety of perspectives based on their differing experiences, cultures, genders, etc. enables viewers to benefit from their informed views across a spectrum of film assessment” (Puig 2019).

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I knew how she felt about film festivals given my previous interview with her. However, I asked her if she felt that there was a formula for movie success. She responded by saying that she didn’t think there is a simple formula. But sometimes there’s a sort of alchemy involved (Puig 2019). She said that it would be easy, and flippant, to say a movie needs to be good to succeed. But we have all seen plenty of bad movies succeed, and far too many excellent movies fail to reach an audience. One of her least favorite aspects of many Hollywood movies is their reliance on formula— happy endings, contrived plot structures, engineered hurdles, and so on. So, she really rejects the idea that formula is part of the alchemy that enables films to succeed. She said, “Sometimes, it’s a matter of timing, and cultural zeitgeist. Other times, it’s more crass than that  – a movie can become a success because of zealous marketing and hype. Social media is also a major part of the equation. All filmmakers can do is make the best movies they know how to make, and hope that an audience discovers it” (Puig 2019). I asked Claudia whether she felt there were any early indicators of a film earning an Academy Award for Best Picture. She said that, again, it too often comes down to the movie with the biggest marketing budget, as well as the most clever, broad marketing campaign. “Content-wise, usually a movie has to be a drama and about a subject that’s fairly important to be in the running for best picture,” she said. “This gives credence to the old adage about comedies or horror films not usually being best picture nominees. But there are occasional exceptions” (Puig 2019). Claudia said that early indicators of potential Oscar glory lately are the films that win both jury and audience awards at major festivals, particularly Toronto. As an example, she stated that the last few years have seen that the audience award winner at TIFF went on to win Best Picture. “At the very least, the films usually have gotten a very positive reaction at Toronto, Telluride, Venice and possibly Cannes before making it to the ranks of nominees,” she elaborated. “Sometimes an indicator is simply star power, such as Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper in A Star Is Born. But, Toronto buzz that remains high through the awards season – September through January  – is one of the more accurate indicators of late” (Puig 2019). I also wanted to know to what extent she felt that Oscar buzz is organic (meaning that the film sells itself) and artificial (meaning that it is driven

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by marketing campaigns). She said that it’s usually more artificial—driven by marketing campaigns—than organic, though there is organic buzz, too. She stated that she hasn’t done a study on how much is spent on Oscar marketing campaigns, but she’s sure there are some correlations between money spent and nominations, if not outright winners. Though, she said that sometimes both can come together and fail. “For instance, last year Roma received both organic and artificial buzz and seemed primed to win best picture, only to be eclipsed by Green Book,” she explained. “Universal spent a fair amount on marketing, but seemingly less than Netflix did with Roma. Or at least they were less obvious and less inventive with their marketing dollars. I guess what this proves is that it’s still a bit of a mystery” (Puig 2019). I said to Claudia that when a movie works, we say it’s got good buzz. But there is no magical formula for buzz. So, I asked her, what makes good buzz? Is it a well-placed celebrity interview (e.g., Ellen, New York Times, etc.)? Is it social media chatter? Or is it recommendations from family and friends? Perhaps the bigger question is how does buzz differ between regular moviegoers and Academy voters. Is there a difference in how you create that buzz? Does influence work the same way among these audiences? She said, “I don’t think it’s one well-placed celebrity interview, but it could be an aggregate of well-placed interviews. For example, Bradley Cooper doing interviews in chosen publications and going on Steven Colbert, Ellen and Jimmy Fallon, etc. helps raise the profile of his film A Star is Born” (Puig 2019). “Social media chatter is also an important part of the mix,” she added. “The advance chatter for Black Panther on Twitter helped make that film a must-see and a repeat experience, and particularly a film for African-­ American audiences to champion heartily on social media” (Puig 2019). She claimed that recommendations from family and friends are also part of the mix, but may be a bit less essential. She also said that Academy voters are affected by the buzz of regular moviegoers, as well as social media and marketing hype (Puig 2019). Claudia thinks influence can work similarly between regular moviegoers and Academy voters. According to her, a perfect example of that confluence is Green Book. “If Academy voters were more artistically minded, they clearly would have chosen Roma, or perhaps The Favourite,” she said. “If they were more politically attuned, perhaps BlacKkKlansman. But Academy voters

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are regular people and are subject to the same influences as regular audiences. They may even be turned off by excessive hype (as Netflix did with Roma) or also in this case swayed by an influencer like Spielberg, who was behind a lot of hype for Green Book” (Puig 2019). I asked her to what extent, if any, that she felt other movie industry awards, such as the Directors Guild Awards, Producers Guild Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards, and so on, serve as predictors of Oscar success. She said that these awards plus other key awards, such as the Writers Guild Awards, definitely serve as predictors of Oscar success, since a lot of their members are also Academy voters (Puig 2019). She said that this is not true of the Golden Globes, whose members— the Hollywood Foreign Press Association—are generally disdained by Academy members. Also, she stated that sometimes critics groups’ awards are predictors of Oscar success, especially for individual acting performances or screenwriting Oscars, less so for Best Picture. She emphasized that the Academy is mindful of aggregate or cumulative success when it comes to voting for Best Picture (Puig 2019). I inquired about the degree to which she felt momentum was a factor in the Oscar race. She responded, “Momentum is indeed a key factor. Some years the Oscars are a foregone conclusion, given momentum and a pattern of winning awards from organizations like the PGA, WGA, DGA and SAG. Voters may vote for the film they just expect will win” (Puig 2019). “On the other hand,” she said, “there are surprise years like when Moonlight won the Oscar over the expected winner, La La Land. It was a fascinating moment, and a fantastic upset, not just because of how it happened on the televised ceremony, but because it said that the make-up of the Academy was changing. Or it reflected something in our culture. Two years later the Academy took a giant step backward, which shows that it’s a divided organization, or one that is clearly experiencing growing pains” (Puig 2019). In terms of Academy voting, I asked her how much was based on personal experience and how much is a result of influence, momentum, ­marketing spend, and so on. She said that she would like to think it’s mostly based on personal experience and taste, but she doesn’t think that’s true for everyone, even possibly the majority of voters. She thinks marketing, influence and momentum probably account for about 60 percent of the voting and personal experience about 40 percent (Puig 2019).

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I also wanted to know how much influence she felt the preferential ballot had on the Academy Award for Best Picture. Claudia said that the preferential ballot has made the voting for Best Picture less accurate. She said two highly ranked films can cancel each other out and a film that most people like, but don’t love, can rise to the top (Puig 2019). “So, the ‘Best Picture’ can conceivably be nobody’s idea of a Best Picture, or only a few people’s idea of a Best Picture,” she said. “This particularly happens if films have very strong advocates and also very strong detractors, which is probably true of the most interesting films. Bland, feel-good, ‘audience pleasers’ can rise to the top and keep out more artistic and challenging films. I think the preferential ballot has skewed the Oscars in a very negative way” (Puig 2019). I mentioned a recent study by USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative which found little change in representation for women, racial and ethnic groups, the LGBT community and people with disabilities. And then asked Claudia what could be done to address this issue. She responded, “The first thing that needs to happen is bringing more diversity to the ranks of the highest positions, those in studios and production companies with the power to green-light projects. Once that happens we’ll see more diversity in film projects, both in front of and behind the camera. Gatekeepers need to be more mindful of diversity and not just hire people who look like them or whom they feel most comfortable with” (Puig 2019). She added, “Other efforts, suggested by the Annenberg study and others, like inclusion riders would also be helpful, if actually implemented. And when people of color or women or LGBT individuals or those with disabilities are in charge of a project (i.e., directors) they need to hire more diverse crews and casts. For instance, people like Guillermo del Toro should think about casting an actual Latina for the lead role of Elisa Esposito in The Shape of Water rather than a British actress like Sally Hawkins” (Puig 2019). I indicated that the same report found a lack of diversity behind the camera, too, and asked her what types of changes she saw being made, if any, to address this issue. She said, “Not enough. It’s great that we’re ­seeing a few more women cinematographers and one Oscar-winning costume designer who is a person of color, but we need more than tokens” (Puig 2019). She said that she sees some efforts being made on the part of film festivals, like TIFF and Sundance, who are programming their festivals with 50 percent women directors. But, she noted, there are festivals like Cannes

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that refuse to consider these efforts and are largely white male dominated (Puig 2019). Further, she stated, “A great deal more effort needs to be made starting at the lowest levels and in film schools as well as at every level in Hollywood. The studies show very little change over the years, especially with some ethnic groups like Latinos, or occasional upticks, as with Asians last year with Crazy Rich Asians being a hit at the box office. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has also pledged to diversify their ranks and has been doing so over the last few years. But the overall issue remains an industry-wide problem and needs to be more aggressively addressed, long before it gets to the Academy level” (Puig 2019). In the process of interviewing industry experts, I also wanted to include the perspective of someone from the marketing field. Therefore, I next interviewed Kymn Goldstein, the Chief Operating Officer of Allied Integrated Marketing, the leading entertainment, lifestyle and culture agency in North America whose clients include all of the movie studios. Prior to joining Allied, Kymn launched several start-ups and was Senior Vice President at News Corporation’s News America Marketing division where she oversaw sales and developed promotional programs for brands and entertainment companies to reach consumers. Like the others I interviewed, she said that movies played a significant role in her life. For instance, one of her earliest memories of movies consists of The Wizard of Oz, her mother’s favorite movie, which she watched every year. In addition, she said that her favorite movie of all time is Working Girl (Goldstein 2019). She enjoyed the movie because it was uplifting and inspirational, and it does everything a good movie should do in terms of entertainment and makes you feel a full range of emotions. She especially liked the last scene when Melanie Griffith’s character arrives at work and finds out that she’s now earned herself an office (Goldstein 2019).  At the time, the movie earned six Oscar nominations, including Best Actress for Melanie Griffith, Best Picture and Best Director,  and was also a box office success (Nicholson 2018). I asked Kymn what made a great movie. She said that watching a great movie, one can be taken in by the beautiful cinematography and wonderful acting. But the essence of a really great movie is its ability to transform the viewer by immersing us in a world we may or may not have ever known. It has a sense of discovery about it (Goldstein 2019).

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She added, “Really great movies have the ability to touch our hearts and stimulate our minds through laughter, heartbreak, love or fear. They share elements of the human experience across all landscapes and characters – in this world and beyond” (Goldstein 2019). In regard to her inspirations for pursuing a career in the film industry, she said that her entry into the entertainment industry was by happenstance. However, once there, she was lured in and stayed because the entertainment industry is very seductive. She said that it was fun, challenging, demanding and comprising extremely passionate, hard-working, creative people. For her, it was hard to be exposed to that and pursue a more sensible line of work (Goldstein 2019). Because she interacts with film critics regularly, I asked her to what extent she believed that film critics influence audiences. She replied, “They are an important part of marketing a film and they can have a big influence. However, the definition of a critic has broadened and continues to evolve due to social media, word of mouth, buzz and better tracking and understanding of who and what has actually had influence on a campaign” (Goldstein 2019). I asked her if she believed if there was a formula for movie success. She said, “A good story, a well-written script and recognizable talent are key. And, ultimately a movie must know and have an audience interested in seeing it. You can’t get people to show up if they don’t want to see it” (Goldstein 2019). Also, for Kymn, it’s clear when a movie is going to be a success. “It’s buzz, buzz, buzz. People talking about what they’ve seen and telling other people, ‘You’ve got to see this,’” she said. “It also needs ‘saleable originality,’ meaning even if it’s similar to something else, something that came before, it has to have its own swagger to own a space” (Goldstein 2019). I found her answers to the next series of questions fascinating given her position as a marketing executive. When asked whether she felt that Oscar buzz is organic (meaning that the film sells itself) and artificial (meaning that it is driven by marketing campaigns), she said that she thinks a movie’s buzz is organic, even when it is drafting off a campaign element because you cannot make it happen. She said, “You can create the environment but real buzz is something that takes off and surpasses e­ xpectations. Then all of the marketers take credit but it is almost always a welcome surprise. Oscar buzz, on the other hand, is mostly all driven by marketing. Because it is seeding the industry with specific sentiments about a film, its actors and its rags-to-riches story of how it came to be” (Goldstein 2019).

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I wanted her thoughts on what creates good buzz and whether buzz differs between regular moviegoers and Academy voters. She said that she thought that film critics play a much greater role in Oscar buzz while other types of influential people such  as  influencers, family and friends, and co-workers play a more significant role during the traditional campaign (Goldstein 2019). Since Kymn’s company represents all of the major studios, I knew that she was a good source to consult to determine whether certain industry awards were considered predictive. She said that certain awards, such as the Directors Guild Awards, Producers Guild Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards, and so on, are so predictive, it’s always exciting when there are Oscar surprises (Goldstein 2019). In light of her response, I also wanted to know whether she felt momentum is a factor in the Oscar race. “Momentum is a key factor in most things we all do,” she responded. “So, in terms of the Oscar race, it is extremely influential” (Goldstein 2019). She added, “Also, since the Oscar season is so long there are lots of opportunities to make a mistake. Like any race, you have to get out of the blocks fast and get noticed by being up front in the pack. But being the leader isn’t always the best position because by setting the pace you might lose momentum too soon” (Goldstein 2019). “That is, Oscar campaigns need to have a cadence. This means that good campaigns ebb and flow with enough forward momentum to avoid burnout,” said Kymn (Goldstein 2019). Lastly, I wanted the perspective of a journalist to see how all of this information about movies is processed and conveyed to their audiences. To that end, I also interviewed K.J.  Matthews, an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning journalist. K.J. has covered Hollywood for more than a decade, most recently for CNN and now as a BBC Contributor. At CNN, she played a major role in their primetime specials, produced some of the network’s most watched stories and covered the Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes and the Grammys for the network. I asked K.J. about her earliest memories of going to the movies. She said that there were a number of movies that left an indelible mark on her when she was younger. Three that stand out for her are Saturday Night Fever, Purple Rain and Sixteen Candles. All three represented different stages of her youth that she absolutely loved (Matthews 2019).

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She grew up thinking she wanted to be an actress because of films like these. The music, the characters and the larger than life story were so attractive to her. She is such a music lover that when she was younger she always gravitated toward films with soundtracks that she thought were often better than the movies. She said that, in a sense, you could say these films provided the soundtracks to her life back then (Matthews 2019). However, one of her favorite movies of all time is Silence of the Lambs. She said, “It’s  one of those films that you can never forget. Not just because it was award-winning, but because the storytelling, the acting and the directing was unparalleled. The way Jonathan Demme directed that autopsy scene where an insect is discovered in the throat of a corpse is one of the most ghastly scenes I’ve ever watched. He draws you in while at the same time it’s repelling. It’s ghastly yet artful. Anthony Hopkins steals every scene and Jodie Foster’s acting is above par. The thriller left a huge impression on me and illustrates great filmmaking on every level.” Another of her favorite movies is Bridesmaids. According to K.J., “The two best things about Bridesmaids are the all-star female cast and femalewritten screenplay. Actresses Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Ellie Kemper and Wendi McLendon-Covey give us so many unforgettable scenes with some of the best one-liners in film. It’s genuinely funny from beginning to end. It’s not often you see that type of continuity in both acting and writing in comedic feature films. And that’s why I loved it.” In regard to her least favorite movie, she said, “Hands down it would be Birth of a Nation for obvious reasons. More than a hundred years after this monumental film debuted, it’s still ranks high as one of the most abhorrent films ever made. I almost feel that it’s offensive to even be asked why it’s offensive. It’s repulsive and littered with the worst stereotypes about blacks that existed during that period. From the white actors wearing blackface to the idolatry of the KKK to the fact that it shoves a revisionist history down our throats, it’s really loathsome.” She continued, “The film takes place in the South and tells the story of two very different families living during the America Civil War era and the Reconstruction Period. And although it’s on the National Film Registry and has been lauded for its technological feats at the time, it’s still difficult for me to see any redeeming qualities in this three-hour film. Thankfully, that sort of film would not be made, financed, or even receive theatrical distribution today.”

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The film, which portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as heroes, was produced in 1915 by D.W. Griffith and is a sorry part of Hollywood’s legacy. It is estimated that the movie was a huge box office success despite its racist message (Gray 2018). The film also has the unfortunate distinction of being the first movie screened at the White House by President Woodrow Wilson. However, 100 years later, President Barack Obama would host a screening of Ava DuVernay’s movie Selma, the civil rights historical drama (Lumenick 2015). Birth of a Nation was remade in 2016 to more accurately portray Nat Turner’s slave rebellion. It premiered to great acclaim and won both the grand jury and audience award at the Sundance Film Festival where it was purchased by Fox Searchlight Pictures for $17.5 million, a record at the time. Although, the movie was later embroiled in controversy surrounding sexual assault allegations involving its director, Nate Parker, that divided audiences (Carroll 2016). Though K.J. is an entertainment journalist, she is not a film critic per se. Nevertheless, I asked her how much film critics influenced audiences. She said, “Decades ago when you said the word ‘film critic’ 100% of people knew exactly what a film critic was. And the image of Roger Ebert or Leonard Maltin would come to mind. Real film critics were few and far between, and everyone seemed to know who they were and trusted their judgment. But I believe social media has played a role in blurring the line and thus given film critics a little less influence over movie audiences” (Matthews 2019). “From your YouTube movie reviewers to your movie bloggers to your red carpet vloggers to your Instagram influencers, everyone has an opinion about a film and it’s becoming harder and harder to sort it all out,” she explained. “Adding to this is the fact that actors now have their own social media platforms to promote and sway audiences by speaking directly to them. These are all new ways of bypassing the standard route of movie promotion. So, I think film critics have seen their influence wane over the last few decades” (Matthews 2019). That said, she still recognized that film critics are as essential to Hollywood as chefs are to restaurants. “Anyone can cook but chefs are trained to delight our palates,” she stated. “Well, film critics are the same way. Film critics have studied the art of movie making and film criticism and the history of film. They provide a necessary and fair review and critique of movies for the general public. People rely on them to find out whether they should spend their hard earned money on a film” (Matthews 2019).

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She added, “As films and filmmakers become more diverse, so too should the ranks of film critics. Every film critic brings their biases whether conscious or unconscious into the theater. So, it’s important that the viewpoint coming out of that theater is not a monolithic one. It’s important that we have a wide range of reviews from film critics of different socio-­ economic classes, genders and races. Having the same people from the same background deliver film reviews over and over is like eating the same dinner daily. We all need and crave a more balanced diet because it’s healthy” (Matthews 2019). In response to the results of USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative study referenced earlier, K.J. said, “It starts at the top. It’s not enough for people of color, the LGBT community or people with disabilities to want change–studios and networks and actors have to demand it. I think the inclusion rider was a good first step but I don’t think enough Hollywood actors got on board with it. If studios wanted to hire more people from diverse backgrounds they would period. I think we have to continue to show them why it’s great for their financial bottom line to have talented writers and producers from different backgrounds coming together to deliver the best product” (Matthews 2019). “This applies to people behind the camera as well,” she continued. “Change has to come from those who have the power to hire people above and below the line. I see more and more people using the buzz words of diversity and inclusion. But I would like to see more people taking action to make that a reality” (Matthews 2019).

References Carroll, Rebecca. 2016. The Birth of a Nation: How Nate Parker Failed to Remake History. The Guardian, October 10. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian. com/film/filmblog/2016/oct/10/the-birth-of-a-nation-problems-nate-parker Feinberg, Scott. 2019. How Oscar’s Preferential Ballot Works – And Could Produce a Best Picture Shocker. The Hollywood Reporter, February 24. Retrieved from https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/how-oscar-s-preferential-ballotworks-could-produce-a-best-picture-shocker-1189677 Goldstein, Kymn. 2019. Interview by Owen Eagan, June 6. Gray, Tim. 2018. Hollywood’s Sorry Legacy: D.W.  Griffith’s ‘The Birth of a Nation.’ Variety, August 3. Retrieved from https://variety.com/2018/film/ features/griffith-birth-of-a-nation-1202891805/?jwsource=cl ———. 2019. Interview by Owen Eagan, May 22. Hammond, Pete. 2019. Interview by Owen Eagan, June 27.

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Hiatt, Brian. 2019. “How do you top a movie that shook Hollywood? The auteur behind ‘Get Out’ has a simple plan: Scare the hell out of you.” Rolling Stone, January 29. Retrived from https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/moviefeatures/director-jordan-peele-new-movie-cover-story-782743/ Lumenick, Lou. 2015. Why ‘Birth of a Nation’ Is Still the Most Racist Movie Ever. New York Post, February 7. Retrieved from https://nypost.com/2015/02/07/ why-birth-of-a-nation-is-still-the-most-controversial-movie-ever/ Matthews, K.J. 2019. Interview by Owen Eagan, June 8. Nicholson, Amy. 2018. “Working Girl at 30: the workplace comedy that changed the game.” The Guardian, December 17. Retrieved from https://www. theguardian.com/film/2018/dec/17/working-girl-at-30-the-workplacecomedy-that-changed-the-game Puig, Claudia. 2019. Interview by Owen Eagan, September 17. Whipp, Glenn. 2018. How the Oscars Preferential Ballot Turns the Best Picture Race Into a Celebration of the ‘Least Disliked.’ Los Angeles Times, March 1. Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-ca-mnoscars-preferential-ballots-20180301-story.html

CHAPTER 10

Closing Thoughts

Abstract  This chapter provides closing thoughts based on the previous chapters. It primarily summarizes the content of the book in the form of key takeaways. Keywords  Movies • Streaming services • Film festivals • Film critics • Word of mouth • Oscars • Razzies • Directors Guild of America • Producers Guild of America • Screen Actors Guild While no one has a crystal ball and can predict the future of movies, the evidence suggests that there will always be a market for the cinematic experience. This is due to the strength of this market throughout the years and the appeal of going to the cinema, especially for high-value customers. That said, streaming services will likely continue to have an impact on the industry. To what extent is anyone’s guess but the rules for successful filmmaking will likely stay the same (The Numbers 2019; Nash 2019). And what are those rules? The fact is that no one really knows since many experts agree with William Goldman’s assertion that “Nobody knows anything.” But while it’s clear that there is significant risk in making movies, there are a number of ways to reduce these risks. This includes conducting a “comp analysis” to determine how similar types of films have performed in the past, consulting film critics for their expertise in the

© The Author(s) 2020 O. Eagan, Oscar Buzz and the Influence of Word of Mouth on Movie Success, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41180-0_10

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production phase, promoting diversity in representation and storytelling, and generating early buzz among influencers at film festivals (Nash 2019). To reiterate, film festivals provide a host of benefits to filmmakers and serve as sources of promoting diversity and creativity. Some film festivals can even be predictors of Best Picture success based on their mission, movies and audiences, and how their awards are determined. But even though an estimated 40 percent of independent films won’t get a theatrical release, there is immense value in utilizing film festivals as a platform to tell these stories (Follows and Nash 2019). Film critics play an important role in this process. Though our research shows that they have only have a moderate influence on wide releases, the difference between negative and positive reviews could translate into millions of dollars. This is due to the inordinate influence of the negativity bias in the form of negative reviews. As a result, it is recommended that film critics be consulted during the pre-production and production phases to solicit their feedback (Eagan 2018). For those films that are fortunate enough to obtain a theatrical release, there are early indicators to gauge how the movie is performing. For example, we’ve shown that box office revenue can be used as a proxy for word of mouth. This is evident in the percentage change in weekend box office revenue, which should generally be in the 30–40 percent range unless the movie is a highly anticipated movie and garners an unusual amount of revenue in its first weekend. Again, our studies show that the average percentage change for Oscar nominees in their first four weeks was −24 percent while this figure for Razzie nominees was −54 percent (Eagan 2016). Franchise films, such as superhero movies, usually generate a significant amount of revenue in their opening weekends. Therefore, their subsequent weekend revenue numbers can be skewed compared to other movies. As a frame of reference, Wonder Woman declined by 43 percent, which was the lowest of any superhero movie. By comparison, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice lost 69 percent in its second weekend, resulting in the second steepest drop for a superhero movie. At the time, it shared this dubious distinction with X-Men Origins: Wolverine from 2009. The only movie to do worse was Hulk from 2003, which lost 70 percent (McClintock 2016). In addition, our studies also showed that tweet rate and tweet sentiment can also be good early indicators. Specifically, there were significant and strong positive correlations between these indicators and box office revenue. This is likely because Twitter is a good predictive market in general (Eagan 2017). It’s also likely due to the wisdom of crowds which was evident in our film festival research.

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All of these indicators, including film critics’ reviews, weekly box office revenue, tweet sentiment and tweet rate, can help us determine a movie’s success. And, though we know that Oscar-nominated movies are generally high performers at the box office, trying to assess the probability of which films will likely earn an Academy Award is a different story. This is because of the amount of money that is spent by the studios and filmmakers to promote their movies among Academy voters. It should be noted that there is some debate as to how effective these campaigns are but, anecdotally, there is evidence to suggest that they do make a difference. But whether you believe that they have an impact or not, as we discussed earlier, there are some fairly reliable indicators when it comes to predicting the Academy Award for Best Picture. That is, the Directors Guild of America (DGA) has a 70 percent success rate, the Producers Guild of America (PGA) has a 65 percent success rate and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) has a 50 percent success rate over the last 20 years. Moreover, using Bayes’ Rule, we know that if a movie wins both the DGA award and the PGA award it has an 81 percent chance of winning an Oscar. Statistically, it has the same chance if it wins the DGA, PGA and SAG awards, which are pretty good odds. Although, regardless of which movie wins, we know that all of the movies nominated for Best Picture are high-caliber films. In fact, our experts generally agreed upon what makes a great movie. While they all didn’t say the same thing, there were certain themes that emerged. They said that great movies touch you, make you think and stay with you in some way. They also said that they should be original, creatively written and based on engaging stories. Nevertheless, while they more or less agreed on the criteria, their preferences certainly varied. As we saw, they had strong opinions about the movies they liked and didn’t like. Though their viewpoints were very subjective, they were the result of their different perspectives and different experiences. But this is to be expected because we all see movies differently. At the end of the day, I believe their preferences reflect the subjectivity of movies in general. Although word of mouth can be seen as the convergence of these preferences, on some level the magic of movies can never be fully explained. This is likely why the theatrical market will always exist and why the success of films will always be somewhat unpredictable. However, we know that if audiences like a movie, they will recommend it to others and, like Star Wars, it could take on a life of its own regardless of how unpredictable it was in the beginning.

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References Eagan, Owen. 2016. Movie Buzz & Information Cascades. Journal of International Business Disciplines, December. ———. 2017. Twitter Shows Influence of Buzz on Movies. Journal of International Business Disciplines, August. ———. 2018. The Influence of Film Critics on Movie Outcomes. Journal of International Business Disciplines, December. Follows, Stephen, and Bruce Nash. 2019. How Many Independent Films Get a Theatrical Release? American Film Market. Retrieved from https://americanfilmmarket.com/how-many-independent-films-get-a-theatrical-release/ McClintock, Pamela. 2016. Box Office: Inside ‘Batman v. Superman’s Historic Drop-off. The Hollywood Reporter, April 4. Retrieved from https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/box-office-inside-batman-v-880143 Nash, Bruce. 2019. Interview by Owen Eagan, September 30. The Numbers. 2019. Retrieved from http://www.the-numbers.com

Index

A Abad-Santos, Alex, 56, 82 Abraham Ravid, S., 42 Abram, Carolyn, 73 Academy Award, 4, 5, 17, 19, 31, 33, 34, 36, 37, 71, 75, 87, 89, 91–96, 104, 105, 112, 115, 125 Acuna, Kirsten, vi, vii Adventures of Pluto Nash, The, 3 AFI FEST, 31–33 Alex & the Gypsy, 107 Amazing Grace, 28 Amazon, 14, 28, 110 American Beauty, 89 American Film Institute, 19, 30 Animal, The, 41 Apple, 14, 71 Argo, 93 Artist, The, 89, 93 Asur, Sitaram, 78 Avengers: Infinity Wars, 82 Avila, Michael, 1, 77

B Banerjee, Abhijit V., 57 Bankability Index, 23 Barber, Nicholas, 2 Barnes, Brooks, 2, 43, 93, 94 Basuroy, Suman, 42, 45 Batman, 17 Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, 56, 82, 124 Bayes’ Rule, 59, 60, 63, 95, 125 Berg, Madeline, 89 Berger, Jonah, 57, 58, 74, 77 Bergey, Paul K., 43 Bergquist, Yves, 44 Berlin International Film Festival, 25, 34 Bertsch McGrayne, S., 59 Bing, Jonathan, 20 BlacKkKlansman, 113 Black Mass, 103 Black Panther, 53, 63, 82, 113 Blair, Elizabeth, 19

© The Author(s) 2020 O. Eagan, Oscar Buzz and the Influence of Word of Mouth on Movie Success, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41180-0

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INDEX

Boffo! Tinseltown’s Bombs & Blockbusters, 17, 100 Bogdanovich, Peter, 18 Box Office Mojo, 18, 19, 44, 72 Bramesco, Charles, 2 Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 107 Bughin, Jacques, 78 Butler, M., 42 Byers, Tom, 69 Bystander effect, 58 C Cain, Rob, 89 Cannes International Film Festival, 25 Capernaum, 28 Captain America: Civil War, 54 Carroll, Rebecca, 67 Cassidy, John, vi, 3, 70 Chaisson, Anne, 36 Chatterjee, Subimal, 42, 45 Chicago, 89, 93, 104, 107 Chojnicki, Elissa, 92 Cialdini, Robert, 58 Cider House Rules, 89 Citizen Kane, 101 Clooney, George, 19, 21 Color Purple, The, 17 Conditional probability, 59–61, 95, 97 Coogler, Ryan, 53 Corliss, Richard, 78 Cosgrove-Mather, Bootie, 42 Cotillard, Marion, 91 Couturié, Bill, 18–21 Crazy Rich Asians, 14, 116 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 109 Cruise, Tom, 23 D Dark Knight, The, 82 David Crosby: Remember My Name, 28

De’Armond, D., 42 De Vany, Arthur, vi, 3 Deadpool, 54, 82 Deep Impact, 19 DeFranco, Philip, 92, 93 Diffusion of innovations, 5, 68 Digital Trends Staff, 73 Directors Guild of America (DGA), 95–97, 114, 125 Dockterman, Eliana, 71 Don’t Look Now, 100 Driving Miss Daisy, 18, 19 Dunham, Will, 20 E Eagan, Owen, 45–47, 54–56, 70–76, 78–81, 124 Easley, David, 57, 59 8 ½, 100 Eliashberg, Jehoshua, 42, 49 Eller, Claudia, 3 Emerman, Randi, 26 Emerson College, 4, 27, 30, 34, 54, 63 English Patient, The, 89 Erazo, Vanessa, 49 Erbland, Kate, 26 Estroff Marano, Hara, 45 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 109 F Fabrikant, Geraldine, 19 Fahrenheit 9/11, 19 Fate of the Furious, 54 Faughnder, Ryan, 88 Favourite, The, 105, 113 Feeney, Nolan, 72 Feinberg, Scott, 105 Feldhaus, Fabian, 78 Few Good Men, A, 20

 INDEX 

Film critics, 4, 5, 41–49, 101, 107, 110, 111, 117, 118, 120, 121, 123–125 Film Fest 919, 26 Finding Nemo, 2 First Man, 103 Flashdance, 18 Follows, Stephen, 38, 90, 124 Fox, Jesse David, 89, 90 Frankel, Daniel, 1, 56, 77 Freeman, Morgan, 18–20 G Garofalo, Alex, 71 Gemser, Gerda, 44 Get Out, 103, 108 Gleiberman, Owen, 49 Godfather, The, 109 Golden Globe, 26, 75, 90, 94, 114, 118 Golden Raspberry Awards, 72 Goldman, William, 3, 4, 17, 20, 21, 70, 123 Goldstein, Kymn, 116–118 Gone with the Wind, 11 Good Will Hunting, 89 Gorillas in the Mist, 17 Gottlieb, Akiva, 36 Graduate, The, 103 Graser, Mark, 88 Gray, Tim, 92, 100–105, 108 Green Book, 28, 94, 99, 101, 104, 105, 108–110, 113, 114 Green Mile, The, 20 Guber, Peter, 17, 21 H Hammond, Pete, 36, 92, 93, 105–109 Hamptons International Film Festival, 36 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II, 56

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Hartzell, Frank, 26 Hayes, Dade, 20 Heaven’s Gate, 2 Helmer, Edmund, 75, 90, 91 Hennig-Thurau, Thorsten, 78 Hereditary, 102 Heyman, Stephen, 90 Hickey, Walt, 77 High-value customers, 11, 15, 72, 123 Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX), 37, 77 Horn, Alan, 20 Horn, John, 41 Huberman, Bernardo A., 77, 78 Hugus, Elise, 29 Hulk, 56, 124 Hulu, 14 Huntsinger, Julie, 36 Hurt Locker, The, 93 I Iacobucci, Dawn, 43 IMDb, 18, 19, 72 Influencers, 41–49, 67–82, 100, 103, 114, 118, 120 Information Cascades, 3, 4, 53–63 Invictus, 18 Iron Man, 82 Ishtar, 2 J Jain, Vasu, 77 Jaws, 19, 20 John Carter, 1, 2 Jones, Marcus, 94 K Kahneman, Daniel, 45, 78 Keegan, Rebecca, 36, 88 Kegu, Jessica, 53 Kennedy, Kathleen, 23

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INDEX

King’s Speech, The, 22, 89, 93, 102, 104 Kleinberg, Jon, 57, 59 Knight’s Tale, A, 41 L La La Land, 114 Lampel, Joseph, 48 Lang, Brent, 13, 14, 56, 90, 94 Last Black Man in San Francisco, The, 108 Laster, Judy, 28–30 Last Picture Show, The, 18 Laverne & Shirley, 20 La Vie en Rose, 91 Lawrence of Arabia, 100 League of Their Own, A, 20 Leenders, Mark A.A.M., 44 Lehrer, Jonah, 45 Loss aversion, 45 Lucas, George, vi, vii M Mad Max: Fury Road, 103, 105 Mandalay Entertainment, 17 March of the Penguins, 19 Marshall, Carol, 26 Marshall, Penny, 20, 21 Matthews, K.J., 118–121 McClintock, Pamela, 56, 75, 124 McNary, Dave, 54, 88 Mendelson, Scott, 1, 2, 82 Mendocino Film Festival, 26–28 Meslow, Scott, 2 Mestyán, Márton, 77 Midnight Express, 18 Million Dollar Baby, 18 Miramax, 87–89, 93 Missing, 18 Moon, Sangkil, 43

Moonlight, 109, 114 Moore, Eric, 30–34 Motion Picture Association, 25, 75 Motion Picture Association of America, 25 Murphy, Mike, vi My Left Foot, 89 N Nakashima, Ryan, 1 Nash, Bruce, 4, 13, 14, 21–24, 38, 123, 124 National Association of Theatre Owners, 14 Negativity bias, 44, 45, 48, 78, 124 Nelson, Randy A., 92 Netflix, 3, 14, 93, 104, 110, 113, 114 Newsweek, 41 Nicholson, Amy, 88 NPR Staff, 71 Numbers, The, 1, 9, 13, 18, 19, 21, 23, 72, 82, 123 O Obias, Rudie, 19 Oh, Chong, 77 Olson, Elizabeth G., 71 Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, 108 Online Casino, vi Oscar, 5, 18, 26, 28, 30, 32, 33, 36, 37, 73–75, 87–97, 102–105, 107, 110–115, 117, 118, 124, 125 Out of Africa, 18 P Pallotta, Frank, 54 Palmer, Barclay, 3 Paper Moon, 18

 INDEX 

Paranormal Activity, 1, 2, 77 Pavarotti, 28 Pennington, Susan, 88 Pollack, Sydney, 18, 20, 26, 102 Pond, Steve, 88, 89 Predictors, 3, 37, 42, 44, 48, 69, 70, 77, 78, 80, 94, 103, 114, 124 Pressberg, Matt, 82 Price discrimination, 11, 12 Princess of Mars, A, 1 Producers Guild of America (PGA), 95–97, 104, 114, 125 Puig, Claudia, 26–28, 109–116 Pulp Fiction, 93 Purcell, Carey, 82 Purple Rain, 118 R Rain Man, 17 Raphael, Amy, 2 Razzie, 72–75, 124 Redmayne, Eddie, 91 Reinstein, David M., 43, 44 Rocheleau, Matt, 91 Rogers, Everett M., 5, 67–70 Roma, 28, 93, 94, 104, 105, 108, 109, 113, 114 Rothman, Tom, 18, 20 Rotten Tomatoes, 42–48, 55–57, 61, 82, 111 Rumble, 28 S Satake, Eiki, 63 Saturday Night Fever, 118 Saving Private Ryan, 87, 88 Schager, Nick, 19 Screen Actors Guild (SAG), 95–97, 114, 125 Seinfeld, 20

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Selma, 71 Setoodeh, Ramin, 82, 90 Sex, Lies, & Videotape, 88 Shakespeare in Love, 87–89, 93 Shamsie, Jamal, 48 Shape of Water, The, 92, 115 Shawshank Redemption, The, 18, 20 Shugan, Steven, 42, 49 Silver Linings Playbook, 91 Singh, Anita, 78 Singhal, Arvind, 67, 68 Sixteen Candles, 118 Slumdog Millionaire, 89 Smith, Deborah, 45 Smith, Will, 23 Snyder, Christopher M., 43, 44 Social influence, 57, 58 Sony Pictures, 18 Sony Pictures Entertainment, 41 Souvenir, 108 Sperling, Nicole, 87, 88 Spotlight, 93, 99, 100 Stanley, T.L., 91 Stanton, Andrew, 2 Star is Born, A, 104, 112, 113 Star Wars, v, vii, 125 Star Wars: The Force Awakens, 54, 82 Star Wars: The Last Jedi, 82 Steve Jobs, 103 Straight Outta Compton, 103 Streaming services, 13, 14, 29, 110, 111, 123 Sundance Film Festival, 19, 25, 34, 36, 88 Sunstein, Cass R., 58, 59 Surowiecki, James, 34–36 T Taback, Lisa, 93 Telluride Film Festival, 36 Terry, N., 42

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INDEX

Thaler, Richard H., 58, 59 Time consistency, 12 Titanic, 75, 76, 89 To Kill a Mockingbird, 110 Tootsie, 18 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), 25, 27, 28, 34, 109, 112, 115 Tversky, Amos, 45 Tweet rate, 77, 78, 80–82, 124, 125 Tweet sentiment, 80, 124, 125 Twilight Zone, 103, 108 Two for the Road, 107 2001: A Space Odyssey, 100 U Uhrig, S.C. Noah, 10 United States Census Bureau, 10 Us, 108 V Van Oostrum, Martine, 44 Vashlishan Murray, Amy, 63 Venice Film Festival, 34 Verhoeven, Beatrice, 56 Villarreal, Yvonne, 2 Vogel, Harold L., 75 W Wagmeister, Elizabeth, 82 Wall-E, 2 Wallenstein, Andrew, 44

Walls, David, vi, 3, 70 Walt Disney Company, The, 20 Walt Disney Studios, 1, 2, 20 Waterman, David, 10–12 Weinstein, Bob, 88 Weinstein, Harvey, 87–89, 104 Welkos, Robert W., 2, 42 Werther effect, 58 West Side Story, 109 When Harry Met Sally, 20 Whipp, Glenn, 105 Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, 35, 36 Wiertz, Caroline, 78 Wife, The, 104 Williams, John, vi, 24 Wisdom of Crowds, The, 34 Witches of Eastwick, The, 17 Wizard of Oz, The, 116 Wonder Woman, 56, 82, 124 Woods Hole Film Festival, 28, 29 Working Girl, 116 X X-Men Origins:Wolverine, 56, 124 Y Yasseri, Taha, 77 Z Zanuck, Richard, 19–21 Zero Dark Thirty, 92