Estimates of Movie Earnings: Formula

Been looking at one of my favourite sites, www.boxofficemojo.com. Gives a bit of a snapshot into the world of movie revenues and the like.


As a big fan of movies and data, I was wondering if there was any way to predict how much a movie would make using regression techniques.


My theory is that the final world wide box office is dependent on two main criteria; firstly, the weekend opening (if it opens huge, it is more likely to have a big run) and also, how good the movie is (if it is well accepted, it is more likely to have a good run)


So I have taken the top 60 movies on boxofficemojo, based on domestic US revenue(as a sample), and ran a regression with the dependent variable being World Wide Gross, and two independent variables; the opening weekend box office, the second being the movies IMDB rating, less the average IMDB rating (which is around 6.6)


Performing the regression gives the following formula


World Wide Box office = 8.3*(Opening Weekend) + 29,200,000*(IMDB rating-6.6) - 22,000,000


All variables are statistically significant at the 95% confidence interval and the adjusted R2 is 0.91.


So there does appear to be a relationship. Interesting. Based on that, I can predict the Revenues of the Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part2 of $841,392,700 (which should make more that Mockingjay Part 1, ($755,000,000), but not as big as Catching Fire (which made $865,000,000).