The formula for UK box office success
Published 30 May 2008
Dr Caroline Elliott and Dr Rob Simmons
Dr Caroline Elliott and Dr Rob Simmons, of the Department of Economics, have analysed the success factors of 527 films released in the UK and found a direct correlation between critical reviews, advertising and box office revenues. In particular they found:
Higher critical review scores attract greater advertising – 11.1% more, and lead to a total 14.5% increase in film revenue. Critical reviews serve as an early judgement of quality as a film opens, reinforced by word of mouth.
- UK advertising is greater for films with higher US opening revenues and higher budgets – films released simultaneously in the US and the UK attract greater advertising, while a longer gap between the US and the UK induces less advertising. This suggests a perception by distributors that films that are delayed in release after the US opening do not merit advertising as they will not pay off in the UK box office.
- Action/adventure, horror and comedy genre films generated 5% more advertising than dramas. Except for animation and thriller, all genre categories attract larger screen allocations than drama.
- Family-oriented Certificate U films gain 68.9% more revenue than films with other certificates – this highlights the importance of family-oriented films for the industry, when a young child sees a film, they need adult accompaniment and this will necessarily raise box office revenues.
- Sequels have a positive influence on opening week screens which spills into box office revenues – sequels generate 48.9% more revenue than non-sequels.
- UK-distributed films by a major studio generated 4.8% more revenue than UK films attached to independent distributors.
