Could Artificial Intelligence Predict the Next 'Avengers: Infinity War'?

Landon Starr, the head of data science at Clearlink, which uses machine learning to help companies understand consumer behavior. “Although this technology isn’t spot-on quite yet, AI-powered predictions are likely stronger than the human calculations used in the past."

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Even the most data-driven pro sports franchises still need good athletic chemistry to win titles. Moneyball methods might’ve made the Oakland A’s a surprise regular season success, but the team that really showed what advanced stats could do when combined with unpredictable human elements was the 2004 Boston Red Sox, which leveraged players’ scorecards, how they handled pressure, and their team chemistry to win a World Series. If Hollywood wants to do something similar with AI and analytics, it should also understand that it matters who’s wielding that data, and how—and that the best movies are still by people, about people, and for people.

Unlike what is happening at startups outside Hollywood, Legendary’s methods aren’t about predicting the potential success of a movie before it’s made. Instead they’re about optimizing the success of projects already in development, using analytics to decide when and how to release teasers and trailers, and determining how to customize impressions for different potential audiences, even scoring potential moviegoers in terms of their likelihood of attending a specific film

Vault, an Israeli startup founded in 2015, is developing a neural-network algorithm based on 30 years of box office data, nearly 400,000 story features found in scripts, and data like film budgets and audience demographics to estimate a movie’s opening weekend. The company is only a couple years in, but founder David Stiff recently told Fortune that roughly 75 percent of Vault’s predictions “come ‘pretty close’” to films’ actual opening grosses.

While most studios still rely on the traditional methods to put butts in seats—billboards, TV commercials, press junkets for big stars—one production company is also looking to big data to improve how it markets its biggest movies, and who it markets those movies to. Legendary Entertainment, the studio behind movies like Godzilla and Warcraft, brought on Matthew Marolda in 2013 to be its chief analytics officer. Using his background in sports analytics and marketing, Marolda determined Legendary was not gathering the right data about its potential audience and that better information could give Legendary a leg up on studios using traditional methods.

marketing using data