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Hollywood blockbusters and long-tailed distributions: An empirical study of the popularity of movies

Author

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  • Sitabhra Sinha

    (Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, India)

  • S. Raghavendra

    (Madras School of Economics, Chennai, India)

Abstract

Numerical data for all movies released in theaters in the USA during the period 1997-2003 are examined for the distribution of their popularity in terms of (i) the number of weeks they spent in the Top 60 according to the weekend earnings, and (ii) the box-office gross during the opening week, as well as, the total duration for which they were shown in theaters. These distributions show long tails where the most popular movies are located. Like the study of Redner [S. Redner, Eur. Phys. J. B \textbf{4}, 131 (1998)] on the distribution of citations to individual papers, our results are consistent with a power-law dependence of the rank distribution of gross revenues for the most popular movies with a exponent close to -1/2.

Suggested Citation

  • Sitabhra Sinha & S. Raghavendra, 2004. "Hollywood blockbusters and long-tailed distributions: An empirical study of the popularity of movies," Industrial Organization 0406008, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpio:0406008
    Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 4
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Mantegna,Rosario N. & Stanley,H. Eugene, 2007. "Introduction to Econophysics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521039871.
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    Cited by:

    1. Chakrabarti, Anindya S., 2016. "Cross-correlation patterns in social opinion formation with sequential data," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 462(C), pages 442-454.
    2. Márton Mestyán & Taha Yasseri & János Kertész, 2013. "Early Prediction of Movie Box Office Success Based on Wikipedia Activity Big Data," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(8), pages 1-8, August.

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