You are viewing the archive: “The Da Vinci Code”

The Hit Phenomenon?: Japanese Scientists Create Model To Predict Box-Office Success

By NANCY TARTAGLIONE, International Editor | Friday June 15, 2012 @ 2:21am PDTTags: Spider-Man, The Da Vinci Code, Transformers

Japanese scientists have divined a mathematical model for what they call “The Hit Phenomenon.” By calculating the advertising budget of a film before it’s released, along with the amount of time a campaign runs and its word of mouth quotient on social media, a team from Tottori University worked to predict the success of such films as Spider-Man 3 and Avatar and then compared their findings to actual box office. “They appeared to match very well, meaning the calculations could provide a fairly good prediction of how successful a movie could be even before it is released,” said the Institute of Physics, which published the paper in the New Journal of Physics today. The scientists used the model to calculate the likelihood of an individual going to see a movie in a Japanese theater over a period ranging from 60 days ahead of a movie’s release to 100 days after the opening. Although the study was based on the Japanese market, its lead author, Akira Ishii, told Agence France Presse he thinks the model is “very general. It will work in other countries as well.” He also noted a key benefit of the formula is that companies can calculate the best time to spend advertising dollars. Hollywood could soon get its chance to plug in the formula as AFP says there are hopes to make it commercially available.

Comments 22

Ron Howard Won’t Complete Dan Brown Trilogy; Sony Now Looking For New Director

By NIKKI FINKE, Editor in Chief | Tuesday July 26, 2011 @ 6:57pm PDTTags: Amy Pascal, Imagine Entertainment, Michael Lynton, Ron Howard, Sony Pictures, The Da Vinci Code, The Dark Tower, The Lost Symbol, Universal Pictures

EXCLUSIVE: Ron Howard directed and produced both of Sony Pictures’ films based on Dan Brown’s bestselling novels, The Da Vinci Code (in 2006) and Angels & Demons (2009). Now I’ve learned that the Imagine Entertainment principal will not be … Read More »

Comments 38

Random House’s Strong Half-Year Results Driven By ‘Dragon Tattoo’ Sales

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Tuesday August 31, 2010 @ 6:14am PDTTags: Markus Dohle Random House, Random House, Stieg Larsson Book Sales, Stieg Larsson Books, Stieg Larsson Trilogy, The Da Vinci Code, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Mike Fleming

Anyone who doubts the potential of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo need look no further than how the half-year earnings of Bertselmann and its Random House division were positively impacted by the sales of the Millennium … Read More »

Comments (1)