Does the Economist know something?

They used statistics to crunch the numbers, and they found out that name actors can contribute to a film's financial success. So can crowd reviews.

Taken together, these factors explain about 60% of the variation in box-office revenues. Adding an estimate of marketing costs increases our model’s accuracy by another 20 percentage points. That leaves about one-fifth down to factors not explained by the model. “John Carter”, a $275m science-fiction extravaganza that was one of the biggest turkeys in Hollywood history, should have earned $235m according to our model. It made just $73m when it was released in 2012. Clearly, no one yet knows everything.

20% is still unexplained. Is that a big issue in statistics? I don't know.
 
I'm probably ignorant, but I always feel a huge chunk of it is luck. There's been some great films that didn't do well at the box office, and some awful films that made bank. A lot of it perhaps depends on the current circumstances in culture. One of my favs, Donnie Darko, did awful because it released right around 9/11 and nobody wanted to go see a psychological thriller after that event.
 
I would say the number one contributing factor to whether a movie was a success or not was ... the story.

And following closely behind that was casting the way it used to be done with "Casting Directors" who really knew and understood their craft and didn't just pick someone because of their social-media rankings. They picked actors that FIT the part and actually made impactful contributions to movies in ways no director today could comprehend.

But then "Mad Max; Fury Road" came along and swept the box office and Grammies and to me that movie SUCKED! It's the worst road-trip movie in history! They didn't even make it from Point A to point B, they just turned around and went back home. How pathetic can a story be? But ... the majority loved it. So yet again, I'm wrong.

So now I would say all you really need are great stunts, great visuals, non-stop action, non-stop action and non-stop action. And then one catch phrase that might make it big on twitter like "What a lovely day."

But that being said ... I still believe a good story and the right cast, whether they be unknowns or Stars, can make magic happen.
 
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