Interesting Results
Box Office Revenue
To what extent do reviews by critics influence how well a movie will do at the box office? How about whether the movie includes big-name stars? A 2003 study1 investigated how various factors, including these, influence box office revenue, and concluded:
- Movie reviews influence box office revenues (rather than simply predicting them).
- Negative reviews have a greater influence than positive reviews — especially immediately after a film is released.
- Movies that get positive reviews and include well-known actors don’t do significantly better at the box office than movies that get positive reviews but do not include any such actors; however, movies that get negative reviews do better at the box office when they include well-known actors.
- Big-budget movies that get good reviews don’t do significantly better at the box office than low-budget movies that get good reviews, but big budget movies that get bad reviews do better at the box office than low-budget movies that get bad reviews.
1 Basuroy, Suman, Subimal Chatterjee, S. Abraham Ravid (2003), “How Critical are Critical Reviews? The Box Office Effects of Film Critics, Star Power, and Budgets”, Journal of Marketing, 67(4), 103-117.