CorpComms Magazine

Box-office takings for blockbuster films can be foretold by analysing the rate of related tweets prior to their release, according to recent findings from technology company Hewlett Packard.

A team of researchers studied three million tweets about 25 films, including Avatar and The Blind Side and developed algorithms to translate the rate of messaging into dollars and dimes.

The computer scientists also factored in the sentiment of the tweets, getting microbloggers to classify them as positive, negative or neutral via online retailer Amazon's Mechanical Turk application - an Internet market that pays people to perform small tasks that are more easily accomplished by human beings rather than artificial intelligence.

The accuracy of the predictions suggest a very high rate of correlation between online chatter and a film's cash takings. Researchers predicted takings of $30.7 million in the first weekend of release for romantic drama Dear John; it ended up taking $30.5 million. Meanwhile, zombie horror-film The Crazies was anticipated to take $16.8 million in its first weekend in the US; it actually grossed $16.1 million.

The study also explored how hype for a film was generated and how it changed over time, for example how a critical panning for vampire spoof, Transylmania, led to a poor box-office performance or how the Oscar nominated Blind Side had a lukewarm reception on its opening weekend but then went on to experience a surge in Internet chatter and box-office takings the following week owing to positive feedback.

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