Predicting Romantic Comedy Success From Content

Authors

  • Melissa M. Moore University at Buffalo
  • Yotam Ophir University at Buffalo

Keywords:

cinema/film, cultural studies, Hollywood, media economics, media industries

Abstract

Predicting film success has proven challenging, with prior research examining factors including budget, production studios, and stars, to varied degrees of accuracy. Missing was the impact of film scripts and latent linguistic features, examined here through textual analysis. Recent computational study identified the latent thematic content of nearly 200 romantic comedy films, revealing an increasing focus on romantic relationships and tumultuous courtship. We harness the same linguistic model to test whether changes in thematic content are associated with success in reviews, awards, and financial earnings. We find relationship-centered content is positively associated with earnings, mediated by the number of theaters.

Author Biographies

Melissa M. Moore, University at Buffalo

Dr. Melissa Moore (PhD, University at Buffalo) studies narrative persuasion and media effects with a focus on entertainment media. Her work examines the role of emotions in stories and the messages in entertainment media. She is currently a Project Manager at YouGov, Inc.(716) 248-8360

Yotam Ophir, University at Buffalo

Dr. Yotam Ophir (PhD, Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania) is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University at Buffalo. His research focuses on media effects and persuasion, combining computational tools for content analysis with experimental and survey designs to study media content and audience effects.(716) 645-1158

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Published

2023-03-28

Issue

Vol. 17 (2023)

Section

Articles

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