Box Office Showdown: How Does Movie Market Saturation Affect First Weekend Box Office Revenues?

The scheduling of release dates for feature films is among the most important decisions that movie studios make in the life cycle of a movie. While the economic literature on the movie industry has largely focused on modeling the box office success of a movie based on its own characteristics—star power, critical reception, and trailer data—there is a dearth of literature concerning the way that competition from within the industry affects box office revenues. This article primarily uses a propensity score matching model to fill a gap in the literature, establishing causal relationships between different forms of competition and first weekend box office revenues. Notably, the article finds a significant negative effect of releasing alongside a movie of the same genre, no significant effect associated with releasing alongside a movie of the same MPAA rating, and a game-theory dependent significantly positive relationship for releasing alongside an ex ante blockbuster