2015 is Hollywood’s big comeback! At least, that’s how it’s being reported.
After what was an absolutely dismal year at the box office in 2014, movie studios were anxious to see success when 2015 rolled around. The results so far? Fairly impressive for the most part, with box office revenue up and more movies becoming hits, and that’s without the can’t-miss pile of money sure to come from the new Star Wars movie due out before the end of the year. Hollywood may be breathing a sigh of relief, but this year’s returns may be masking a lingering problem -- people just aren’t going out to the movies like they used to. In just the past three years, the four largest film studios have lost billions of dollars on their big releases. Attracting audiences means releasing better films, and the key to making a better movie might just come from the recent advances in big data analytics.
The pattern to providing the content that will get people out to theaters can be seen primarily in two places. The first comes from Netflix. The popular movie and television streaming site has seen its fans grow in number and many of its original shows become a hit with fans and critics alike. Shows like House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, and Daredevil are staples of the site. Those shows weren’t just created by accident or between a dozen people in a corporate board room. Netflix took care to gather and analyze data on what their customers liked, such as who their favorite actors and directors were, what genres they preferred, and more. By combining this data, Netflix could produce original content that struck a chord with audiences, catapulting the company into serious consideration alongside major studios and television channels.
The second place Hollywood can look toward for success is what Marvel has been able to do during the past several years. Utilizing their brand, Marvel has successfully created a full cinematic universe that spans multiple movies, television shows, internet channels, DVD extras, and more. This was no easy undertaking and required collecting large amounts of data about their own property to create a consistent universe within which they could experiment with different stories. They also used data from their audiences to find out which characters they would most like to see, what kind of stories would be worth following, and many more factors. The result has been box office hit after box office hit.
The lesson from these examples is that knowing what your customers want to see is tantamount to success. While that may be simplistic, with big data analytics movie studios now have the tools to get at the very heart of what drives film fans. In fact, the need for focus groups and test audiences has largely disappeared. Filmmakers can now test out certain concepts in small bits by placing them on the internet, then finding out how certain audiences respond. The data collected on the effort and saved on flash storage can not only inform how the film is made, it can greatly affect the marketing push many movies get. This in turn can decrease the amount of money needed to market the movie in the first place, which may lead to high revenues.
These factors, all working in tandem, are all part of trend of using big data for business. It’s a revolutionary way of thinking, but one that studios need to adopt if they want to see their fortunes change. Marketing can get much smarter, movies can involve content people actually want to see, and studios can figure out how well a movie will do weeks or even months before its even released to the public.
With so many different options now available for entertainment, getting people to sit down in a theater and watch a movie is more difficult than ever. While it won’t be a flawless strategy, utilizing big data analytics is the best chance movie studios have of attracting larger audiences once again. By producing better movies and marketing to people that are more likely to respond, Hollywood has a chance to see their craft flourish once more.