Determinants of overall domestic performance of a motion picture

A multi-billion film and television industry is a non-negligible component of both national and global economies, employing hundreds of thousands workers in the domestic market alone. An average major motion picture of recent years amounts to a hundred million U.S. dollars investment. The study explores the determinants of box office revenues. Firstly, the domestic film market is described, and related literature is reviewed. Secondly, using a unique cross-sectional dataset obtained from major publicly available sources we construct several models which should provide us with explanatory information on what factors relate to a theatrical success in terms of revenues. The log-log OLS regression is employed to estimate the impact of key determinants of film's profitability. In conclusion the evaluation of hypotheses is provided alongside with several suggestions on future research and film production. Keywords film industry, film, OLS regression, box office revenue