Degree Type
Honors Capstone Project
Date of Submission
Spring 5-1-2010
Capstone Advisor
Professor Rohfls
Honors Reader
Professor Kubik
Capstone Major
Economics
Capstone College
Management
Audio/Visual Component
no
Capstone Prize Winner
no
Won Capstone Funding
no
Honors Categories
Social Sciences
Subject Categories
Economics | Growth and Development | Income Distribution
Abstract
In this paper, I attempted to determine the relationship between a movie’s box office success and the immediate timing of its release. Considering the large investment that needs to be made in producing and distributing a major motion picture, a full understanding of the factors that affect its success is vital. One factor that has been historically underexplored is the impact of movies that are directly competing with each other at the box office. This has been due to limitations in data. However, using publicly available data I was able to put together a dataset that looked at box office results at the movie-weekend level. Using this I constructed two models. The first takes a broad historical approach, using a prior weekend’s attendance numbers as an approximation of viewer fatigue. The second uses specific instances of a trend break (the release of top grossing movie of the year) to look for a level effect on both new movies entering the market and box office returns in general. Results of the study suggest that a movie’s opening weekend is not strongly dependent on the immediate box office, in both a general sense and in response to a blockbuster movie. Instead, we see adverse effects on those already in the market after a blockbuster’s release relative to other circumstances. I interpreted these results in their application to market timing.
Recommended Citation
Sullivan, Drew, "The Interrelation of Box Office Results How does one weekend’s movie attendance affect the next?" (2010). Honors Capstone Projects - All. 401.
https://surface.syr.edu/honors_capstone/401
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
