Can big data make a movie?

Big data is everywhere it’s driving most businesses and industries to make decisions, it can give an indication of the what the customer wants, how well a product is doing and consumer habits. With social media use on the rise this big data is only growing, and one industry that can capitalise on this is film.

My colleague Ben recently wrote about how big data is changing our viewing habits and deciding what shows TV studios should make, and as both the big data and the film industry continues to grow I want to look at how big data from social media can help to make or break a film.

What the viewer wants

Big data is giving studios mass information on not just the success of the film after it has been made, but how it will be perceived beforehand. With data combined from social media and film review sites like IMDB studios can predict how well a film will perform.

In 2014 IMBD had more the 2.5 million films listed, each with user and critic reviews enabling not just viewers but producers to pinpoint what the audience wants to see and if it will be a box office flop or not. Once this data is combined with that from Facebook, Twitter and even Google searches studios can gain a real insight into what their target audiences wants to see.

This same data can also help the studio decide how to market and release their film. By looking at the reviews similar films have in different locations, and where the most online talk is a studio can dictate where and when a film may be released, making it a staggered release rather than nationwide or worldwide to begin with, hopefully ensuring a cinema sell out.

It’s clear that big data from across the online world can help drive the success of a film, while the success of a film isn’t guaranteed because the data said so it certainly does help a studio go in the right direction. I’m interested to see how far this can go and if in the future big data will purely drive what films are made and how we view them.

How do you think big data is helping the film industry? Do you think the industry should rely heavily on the data provided? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below

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