Movie Industry Economics: How Data Analytics Can Help Predict Movies’ Financial Success

Purpose: Data analytics techniques can help to predict movie success, as measured by box office sales or Oscar awards. Revenue prediction of a movie before its theatrical release is also an important indicator for attracting investors. While measures for predicting the success of a movie in box office sales and awards are widely missing, this study uses data analytics techniques to present a new measure for prediction of movies’ financial success.Methodology: Data were collected by web-scraping and text mining. Classification and Regression Tree (CART), Random Forests, Conditional Forests, and Gradient Boosting were used and a model for prediction of movies' financial success proposed. Content strategy and generating high profile reviews with complex themes can add to controversy and increase the chance of nomination for major movie awards, including Oscars.Findings/Contribution: Findings show that data analytics is key to predicting the success of movies. Although predicting sales based on data available before the release remains a difficult endeavor, even with state-of-the-art analytics technologies, it potentially reduces the risk of investors, studios and other stakeholders to select successful film candidates and have them chosen before the production process starts. The contribution of this study is to develop a model for predicting box office sales and the chance of nomination for winning Oscars. Practical Implications: Cinema managers and investors can use the proposed model as a guide for predicting movies’ financial success

Film policy and the emergence of the cross-cultural: exploring crossover cinema in Flanders (Belgium)

With several films taking on a cross-cultural character, a certain ‘crossover trend’ may be observed within the recent upswing of Flemish cinema (a subdivision of Belgian cinema). This trend is characterized by two major strands: first, migrant and diasporic filmmakers finally seem to be emerging, and second, several filmmakers tend to cross the globe to make their films, hereby minimizing links with Flemish indigenous culture. While paying special attention to the crucial role of film policy in this context, this contribution further investigates the crossover trend by focusing on Turquaze (2010, Kadir Balci) and Altiplano (2009, Peter Brosens & Jessica Woodworth)

Modeling the Relational Marketing of Iranian Films in the Digital Age

Purpose: Relationship marketing seeks to build relationships with your customers that will make them repurchase from the company in the future and encourage others to do so, which is the best approach to retaining customers. Therefore, Internet service providers should be aware of how to establish lasting relationships with their customers and look for relationships to attract customers. The purpose of this study is to design a relational marketing model in the film sales and screening network in Iran. Method: In the present research method, after analyzing the theoretical and experimental records, the qualitative method and in-depth interviews with 10 managers of film sales companies were carried out using targeted sampling method and theoretical sampling, which has reached theoretical saturation. The obtained information was then analyzed using the content analysis method and a paradigm model of relational marketing was constructed. Findings: The results showed that relational marketing in the sales and film network in Iran is one of the factors of relational marketing (including the themes of causal conditions: communication, relationship quality, innovation; background conditions: marketing, advertising; mediating conditions: Customer gender, customer expectations, customer knowledge, customer focus and ultimately the outcome: customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, customer trust, competitive advantage, business performance, and customer commitment) can have an impact. Conclusion: By focusing on the factors obtained in this research, relationship marketing can create customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, competitive advantage, business performance, and customer commitment in film sales companies

Formations of Indian Cinema in Dublin: A Participatory Researcher-Fan Ethnography

This thesis explores emergent formations of Indian cinema in Dublin with a particular focus on globalising Bollywood film culture, offering a timely analysis of how Indian cinema circulates in the Irish capital in terms of consumption, exhibition, production and identity negotiation. The enhanced visibility of South Asian culture in the Irish context is testimony to on the one hand, the global expansion of Hindi cinema, and on the other, to the demographic expansion of the South Asian community in Ireland during the last decade. Through varying degrees of participant observation in and across sites of film production and consumption, alongside interviews with South Asian and western social actors with an interest in Indian cinema, this thesis critically frames manifestations of Indian film culture in Dublin; crucially, it does so via my dual positionality as a fan of Bollywood cinema and a researcher, embedded in new formations of Indian cinema in the Irish capital. Drawing on existing literature surrounding the globalisation and circulation of Hindi cinema outside the Indian subcontinent (Rajadhyaksha 2003; Desai 2004; Athique 2005, 2008b; Dudrah 2012) and fan studies (Jenkins 1992, 2006b; Monaco 2010; Duffett 2013), this thesis endeavours to explore the circulation and the social dynamics of Indian cinema, with particular attention to its impact on Irish urban spaces and in constituting subjectivities in the context of the social and economic changes occurring in Ireland since the last decade. Conducted through the lens of fandom, this study foregrounds the relevance of fan studies in promoting a richer understanding of a globalised and transnational cultural product such as Indian film in its multiple manifestations across the Irish capital, contextualising the complexity of the cultural practices and social environments involved. Significantly, my passionate interest in Bollywood cinema led me on a journey through various sites where Indian films are produced, consumed and exhibited, foregrounding the sheer diversity of modes of circulation and engagement that characterises the emergence of Indian film culture in Dublin. Immersive participant observation as a Hindi film fan thus represented an innovative approach to the exploration of the presence of Indian film in transnational contexts, which further contributes to Indian film studies and to the growing field of transnational cinema

Lexicon of Global Melodrama

This new go-to reference book for global melodrama assembles contributions by experts from a wide range of disciplines, including cultural studies, film and media studies, gender and queer studies, political science, and postcolonial studies. The melodramas covered in this volume range from early 20th century silent movies to contemporary films, from independent ›arthouse‹ productions to Hollywood blockbusters. The comprehensive overview of global melodramatic film in the Lexicon constitutes a valuable resource for scholars and practitioners of film, teachers, film critics, and anyone who is interested in the past and present of melodramatic film on a global scale. The Lexicon of Global Melodrama includes essays on All That Heaven Allows, Bombay, Casablanca, Die Büchse der Pandora, In the Mood for Love, Nosotros los Pobres, Terra Sonâmbula, and Tokyo Story

Lexicon of Global Melodrama

This new go-to reference book for global melodrama assembles contributions by experts from a wide range of disciplines, including cultural studies, film and media studies, gender and queer studies, political science, and postcolonial studies. The melodramas covered in this volume range from early 20th century silent movies to contemporary films, from independent 'arthouse' productions to Hollywood blockbusters. The comprehensive overview of global melodramatic film in the Lexicon constitutes a valuable resource for scholars and practitioners of film, teachers, film critics, and anyone who is interested in the past and present of melodramatic film on a global scale. The Lexicon of Global Melodrama includes essays on All That Heaven Allows, Bombay, Casablanca, Die Büchse der Pandora, In the Mood for Love, Nosotros los Pobres, Terra Sonâmbula, and Tokyo Story

Birth of the cool : global flows and the growth of English language stand-up comedy in Mumbai

"Birth of the Cool: Global Flows and the Rise of English Language Stand-up Comedy in Mumbai" investigates how English language stand-up is rearticulating the meaning of 'cool' in Mumbai. The dissertation aims to study how this global format, tweaked to simultaneously suit and challenge local bourgeois tastes, has transitioned from subcultural phenomenon to mainstream entertainment product. I examine the Hindi film and television industry's role in bringing stand-up to prominence and how this relationship has grown into a symbiotic one. I situate all of this in the context of Westernization, increased access to the Internet and other competing media, and draw attention to an intertextual field that is continuously negotiating modernity. I do a close analysis of online satirical videos such as 'All India Bakchod Knockout' and 'Rape: It's Your Fault' to demonstrate how stand-up culture becomes 'cool' and earns significant mainstream media attention; and how it uses this cachet to propagate a forward-thinking, progressive agenda. I link expressions of modernity to a circuit of 'cool,' whose constituent elements interact in a highly articulated manner to make meanings, both permanent and temporary, in different moments. I record the tensions between present and past, the global and the local, and use media ethnography and textual analysis techniques to capture the rich texture of Mumbai's English language stand-up comedy scene, which is distinct from Hindi and regional language comedy performances. In India, English language stand-up comedy has grown in relevance by heavily engaging with contemporary cultural politics and discursively defining the parameters of 'cool.' But this has masked the reluctance to make similar interventions in electoral politics. I argue that stand-up has chosen to evolve thus because morally compelling social issues such as women's rights and the elimination of corruption generate less controversy than the polarizing act of confronting political parties with the power to regulate the scene. My study contributes to different debates and bodies of scholarship, ranging from globalization and performance culture to gender studies and cultural anthropology, by showing how producers, consumers and regulators of Mumbai's English language stand-up scene come together to ultimately re-imagine Indian modernity.Radio-Television-Fil