If only Bollywood – India’s $4 billion movie factory -- had a crystal ball to gaze into and gauge the fate of the over 250 movies it churns out every year. This would certainly save the world’s most prolific film industry millions of rupees in losses. Truth be told, only a handful of these projects rake in the moolah at the box office, while others tank faster than the Indian economy has under the UPA!
At present, there’s no scientific tool to predict the success of movies. However, it looks like this trend is all set to change. Researchers at Oxford University have devised a mathematical model, which can be applied to predict the fate of a film with reasonable accuracy.
The model involved researchers analysing the flurry of activity on Wikipedia pages. About 312 American films -- released in 2009 and 2010 -- were scrutinised on the basis of the number of page views for the movie’s articles, the number of human editors contributing to the article, the number of edits made, the diversity of online users and so on.
The formula was applied retrospectively so that the researchers could systematically chart the online buzz on Wikipedia around particular films, and compare this with the box office takings from the first weekend after release. The results of the comparison between the predicted opening weekend revenue, and the actual figures, had a high degree of correlation.
The mathematical algorithm allowed the team to predict box office revenues with an overall accuracy of around 77 per cent, higher than the best existing predictive models at around 57 per cent. In fact, using the same formula, the researchers correctly forecast the performance of blockbusters like Iron Man 2, Alice in Wonderland, Toy Story 3 and Inception.
Considering nine out of 10 Bollywood movies are flops, the new model will indeed be a Godsend for jittery producers who spend sleepless nights agonising over the fate of their movies. Who can deny that films have the potential to skyrocket the profits of a studio, or to send it into financial ruination and bankruptcy. Stories of Indian producers selling their mansions, wives’ jewellery, family heirlooms and land to keep a project going are aplenty. Director N. Chandra once said that while making Ankush, he not only had to sell his house but also his wife and sister’s jewellery.
Legendary filmmaker Manmohan Desai’s father Kikubhai Desai, owner of Paramount Studios, was one of the industry’s richest producers of his time. In fact, he was so loaded that he used to get his wardrobe specially flown in from the most expensive boutique in Paris. However, the savvy filmmaker once had the misfortune to back a wrong film that led to his financial ruin and made him a pauper.
Hits, say analysts, are random events, based on viewers’ approval, which is mostly a response based on artistic, social, cultural and psychological factors. While these factors are predominantly “unconscious”, they play a vital part in determining whether viewers will like or lump a film.
Stakes are thus extremely high in the film industry and nobody can afford to gamble. Decision makers need the support of rigorous, systematic and scientific procedures. So a template that brings the rigours of science to the art of cinema is, indeed, very welcome.
Lately, Bollywood has been experimenting with the most varied templates, and strangely all genres have succeeded. But this has also made it that much more tricky to predict what will work and what won’t at the BO. Bollywood films are multi-million dollar productions, often crossing Rs 100 crores. The science fiction movie Ra.One, for instance, was made at a gargantuan budget of 150 crores, making it the most expensive Bollywood movie ever.
With over 200 films produced annually (about double of Hollywood’s turnover), Bollywood is India’s showpiece brand abroad. Growing 10 per cent yearly, it generated revenues of $3.5 billion last year. By 2016, the industry’s revenue, reckon analysts, will cross $ 5 billion.
Against this backdrop, it will be interesting to see how the new prediction tool can make the industry’s life easier. Its accuracy and success will surely put Bollywood producers in a celebratory mood. In fact, they may even break into a jig, a la Shah Rukh Khan in his latest chartbuster from Chennai Express – “One, two, three, four….get on the dance floor!”
