What types of films are successful at the box office? Predicting opening weekend and non-opening gross earnings of films

ABSTRACT

Although the film industry is high risk, sequels and films adapted from novels or comic books can be financially successful because they can capitalise on the established brands of their parent work. Focusing on sequels and adaptations as extended lines and brands, this paper analysed 2,490 films released between 2010 and 2013 in the U.S. to examine what types of films were successful in terms of opening weekend gross and non-opening gross. During opening weekends, while sequels generated higher grosses than non-sequels, sequels adapted from existing work generated even higher grosses. Brand strategies involving stars and title novelty further helped adaptation sequels generate higher grosses mostly during opening weekends. Sequels and adaptations may work together to garner line and brand extension benefits upfront.

KEYWORDS:

• Films
• sequels
• adaptations
• box office
• brand extension
• opening weekend gross

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Sequels have viewed as an extended brand of parent films in prior scholarship (Brewer et al., 2009; Moon et al., 2010; Oliver et al., 2014; Prag & Casavant, 1994; Ravid, 1999; Sood & Drèze, 2006). However, it is worth noting that sequels are more closely related to line extension rather than Aaker and Keller’s original definition of brand extension (1990) because a change of a product category is absent. In this sense, sequels can be viewed as line extension while adaptations may be more closely related to the original definition of brand extension.

2. While information on ratings and production budgets was available for the majority of sequels, the corresponding information was not available for a significant portion (i.e., more than three quarters) of all films released between 2010 and 2013. When ratings and log production budget were controlled for in analyses of films opened on 600 or more theatres (see Dhar et al., 2012), they appeared not to be significantly related to opening weekend gross while only marginally related to non-opening gross. Accordingly, ratings and log production budget were controlled for analyses of sequels, not all films.

3. Multicollinearity statistics for all variables are reported in Tables 4 and 5.

4. This led to an important question of generalisability, whether and to which degree this study’s population parameters within the timeframe of 2010–2013 are generalisable across time. The ‘year’ variable (coding: “1” = films released in 2010, “2” = in 2011, “3” = in 2012, and “4” = in 2013) was additionally included in the analysis to examine whether ‘years’ significantly predicted sequels’ box office performance indicators. The results indicated that years did not predict sequels’ box office performance indicators to a statistically significant degree (Opening Weekend Gross: b = .00, SE = .06, p > .10, Non-Opening Gross: b = −.01, SE = .07, p > .10). Additional analyses were conducted to see if years interacted with adaptation and title novelty to predict sequels’ box office indicators. However, none of the interaction terms were statistically significant. Taken together, time does not seem to be an issue for generalisability at least in this span of the time–from 2010 to 2013.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dam Hee Kim

Dam Hee Kim (Ph.D., University of Michigan) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Arizona. With her cross-disciplinary background in communication and business, her research focuses on engagement with news, politics and entertainment content in the evolving media environment.