IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ijb/journl/v3y2004i2p93-106.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Revenues, Profitability, and Returns: Clinical Analysis of the Market for Mobster Films

Author

Listed:
  • W. David Walls

    (Department of Economics, University of Calgary, Canada)

Abstract

We analyze empirically the revenues, profitability, and financial returns of mobster-related movies using data from worldwide theatrical exhibition, television syndication, and video rentals and sales. We quantify the revenues across each window of exhibition in relation to subsequent windows and to the production budget. A regression model is used to show the composition of worldwide revenues in relation to production value across the sequential windows of release. Project-level profitability and returns to investment are found to deviate substantially from normality. For the purpose of investment decision-making and risk management, the distribution of financial returns is fitted using the Levy-stable distribution to account for its high peak and heavy upper tail. Gangster-film profitability prospects are computed from the fitted Levy-stable distribution.

Suggested Citation

  • W. David Walls, 2004. "Revenues, Profitability, and Returns: Clinical Analysis of the Market for Mobster Films," International Journal of Business and Economics, School of Management Development, Feng Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan, vol. 3(2), pages 93-106, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:ijb:journl:v:3:y:2004:i:2:p:93-106
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ijbe.fcu.edu.tw/assets/ijbe/past_issue/No.03-2/pdf/vol_3-2-1.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://ijbe.fcu.edu.tw/assets/ijbe/past_issue/No.03-2/abstract/01.html
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ravid, S Abraham, 1999. "Information, Blockbusters, and Stars: A Study of the Film Industry," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 72(4), pages 463-492, October.
    2. W. Walls, 2005. "Modeling Movie Success When ‘Nobody Knows Anything’: Conditional Stable-Distribution Analysis Of Film Returns," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 29(3), pages 177-190, August.
    3. De Vany, Arthur S. & Walls, W. David, 2004. "Motion picture profit, the stable Paretian hypothesis, and the curse of the superstar," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 1035-1057, March.
    4. Arthur De Vany & W. David Walls, 2002. "Does Hollywood Make Too Many R-Rated Movies? Risk, Stochastic Dominance, and the Illusion of Expectation," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 75(3), pages 425-452, July.
    5. Arthur De Vany & W. Walls, 1999. "Uncertainty in the Movie Industry: Does Star Power Reduce the Terror of the Box Office?," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 23(4), pages 285-318, November.
    6. Benoit Mandelbrot, 2015. "The Variation of Certain Speculative Prices," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Anastasios G Malliaris & William T Ziemba (ed.), THE WORLD SCIENTIFIC HANDBOOK OF FUTURES MARKETS, chapter 3, pages 39-78, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Novriana Sumarti & Rafki Hidayat, 2013. "A Financial Risk Analysis: Does the 2008 Financial Crisis Give Impact on Weekends Returns of the U.S. Movie Box Office?," Papers 1306.0966, arXiv.org.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Don M. Chance & Eric Hillebrand & Jimmy E. Hilliard, 2008. "Pricing an Option on Revenue from an Innovation: An Application to Movie Box Office Revenue," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(5), pages 1015-1028, May.
    2. W. D. Walls & Jordi McKenzie, 2020. "Black swan models for the entertainment industry with an application to the movie business," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(6), pages 3019-3032, December.
    3. W. Walls, 2005. "Modeling Movie Success When ‘Nobody Knows Anything’: Conditional Stable-Distribution Analysis Of Film Returns," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 29(3), pages 177-190, August.
    4. Jordi McKenzie, 2009. "Revealed word-of-mouth demand and adaptive supply: survival of motion pictures at the Australian box office," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 33(4), pages 279-299, November.
    5. Gaenssle Sophia & Budzinski Oliver & Astakhova Daria, 2018. "Conquering the Box Office: Factors Influencing Success of International Movies in Russia," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 17(4), pages 245-266, December.
    6. Davide Lauria & Wyatt D. Phillips, 2021. "Insuring Hollywood: A Movie Returns Index and the American Stock Market," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(5), pages 1-33, April.
    7. Sudip Bhattacharjee & Ram D. Gopal & Kaveepan Lertwachara & James R. Marsden & Rahul Telang, 2007. "The Effect of Digital Sharing Technologies on Music Markets: A Survival Analysis of Albums on Ranking Charts," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(9), pages 1359-1374, September.
    8. Jordi McKenzie, 2010. "Do 'African American' films perform better or worse at the box office? An empirical analysis of motion picture revenues and profits," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(16), pages 1559-1564.
    9. W. Walls, 2009. "Screen wars, star wars, and sequels," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 447-461, October.
    10. W. Walls, 2010. "Superstars and heavy tails in recorded entertainment: empirical analysis of the market for DVDs," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 34(4), pages 261-279, November.
    11. Ana Suárez-Vázquez, 2011. "Critic power or star power? The influence of hallmarks of quality of motion pictures: an experimental approach," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 35(2), pages 119-135, May.
    12. Selvaretnam, Geethanjali & Yang, Jen-Yuan, 2015. "Factors Affecting the Financial Success of Motion Pictures: What is the Role of Star Power?," 2007 Annual Meeting, July 29-August 1, 2007, Portland, Oregon TN 2015-19, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    13. Selvaretnam, Geethanjali & Yang, Jen-Yuan, 2015. "Factors Affecting the Financial Success of Motion Pictures: What is the Role of Star Power?," SIRE Discussion Papers 2015-19, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    14. Jordi McKenzie, 2010. "How do theatrical box office revenues affect DVD retail sales? Australian empirical evidence," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 34(3), pages 159-179, August.
    15. Juan Prieto-Rodriguez & Fernanda Gutierrez-Navratil & Victoria Ateca-Amestoy, 2015. "Theatre allocation as a distributor’s strategic variable over movie runs," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 39(1), pages 65-83, February.
    16. Selvaretnam, Geethanjali & Yang, Jen-Yuan, 2015. "Factors Affecting the Financial Success of Motion Pictures: What is the Role of Star Power?," SIRE Discussion Papers 2015-19, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    17. Frederick Derrick & Nancy Williams & Charles Scott, 2014. "A two-stage proxy variable approach to estimating movie box office receipts," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 38(2), pages 173-189, May.
    18. Allègre Hadida, 2010. "Commercial success and artistic recognition of motion picture projects," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 34(1), pages 45-80, February.
    19. Brinja Meiseberg & Thomas Ehrmann, 2013. "Diversity in teams and the success of cultural products," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 37(1), pages 61-86, February.
    20. W. D. Walls, 2005. "Modelling heavy tails and skewness in film returns," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(17), pages 1181-1188.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    movie industry; gangster films; Levy-stable distribution;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L82 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Entertainment; Media
    • Z11 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economics of the Arts and Literature
    • C16 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Econometric and Statistical Methods; Specific Distributions

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ijb:journl:v:3:y:2004:i:2:p:93-106. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Szu-Hsien Ho (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cbfcutw.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.