We examine the theatrical market for moti on pictures in Thailand using a sample of films exhibited in 2004–2008. Using data on weekly and cumulative film revenues, we find strong evidence of increasing returns to info rmation as indicated by substantial concave departures from the Pareto...

Does Hollywood dominate world cinema markets with American taste, culture, and values through the exportation of films produced mainly for its domestic (US and Canada) market? Or does Hollywood supply the films that world audiences demand and, because of the logistics of distribution, screen...

In recent years, Australian films have failed to capture the public’s attention at the Australian box office. Why? Do Australians have an aversion to their own films? Or does the release strategy—advertising/publicity expenditure and opening number of screens—explain the...

We examine the rate of motion-picture piracy across a sample of 26 diverse countries. The level of piracy is explained empirically by the level of income, the cost of enforcing property rights, the level of collectivism present in a country's social institution and the level of internet usage....

Are motion picture audiences influenced by box office reports? Do they `herd' after the leaders and ignore possibly better but less popular films? How important is a big opening to the revenue a film eventually earns? This paper develops a dynamical learning model of motion picture demand that...

In this paper we use nonparametric statistical tools to quantify motion-picture profit. We quantify the unconditional distribution of profit, the distribution of profit conditional on stars and sequels, and we also model the conditional expectation of movie profits using a nonparametric...

This research presents a systematic empirical analysis of the market for digital versatile discs (DVDs). We examine a sample of 953 DVD titles that appeared on the weekly top-30 sales charts in North America over a 30-month interval. We find that the size distribution of weekly DVD sales revenue...

Piracy is one of the most challenging problems faced by the motion picture industry. The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that US studios lose more than $3 billion annually in box office revenue from piracy. They have launched a major effort to prevent these losses. Yet their...

This article applies recently developed nonparametric kernel regression estimation methods to quantify the conditional distribution of motion picture earnings. The nonparametric, data-driven approach allows the full range of relations among variables to be captured, including nonlinearities that...

The blockbuster strategy---using big budgets, stars, and advertising to create high opening week box office grosses---is based on the theory that motion picture audiences follow an information cascade by choosing movies according to how heavily they are advertised, what stars are in them, and...