Latest reports suggest that the world’s biggest filmmakers are using Artificial Intelligence to decide what films to release. Filmmakers are becoming more meticulous with their choice of films. They want to know what films will be a hit or a miss. Also, they’d like to know the impact these films may have on the market.
A start-up company based in Los Angeles, California, USA, Cinelytic is working on making AI help with film production. The company uses historical film performance data from over the years to retrieve information on key talents and film themes. They are using machine learning to get hidden data patterns.
The new “software lets customers play fantasy football with their film, inputting a script and a cast, then swapping one actor for another to see how this affects a film’s projected box office.”
Cinelytic CEO Tobias Quiesser said,
“Say you have a summer blockbuster in the works with Emma Watson in the lead role. You could use Cinelytic’s software to see how changing her for Jennifer Lawrence might change the film’s box office performance. You can compare them separately, compare them in the package. Model out both scenarios with Emma Watson and Jennifer Lawrence, and see, for this particular film, which has better implications for different territories.”
More recently, a company founded in 2015 boasts of being able to predict a film’s success by using algorithms to analyse its scripts. Another from the same year says it can predict the demography that will watch a film by tracking how the trailer is received online. Meanwhile, there is one that says it can tell how much a move will make even before it launches.
In November 2018, 20th Century Fox said it used AI to predict what type of audience that will find a film most appealing.
In 2016, an academic paper claimed that experts can make predictions on a film’s profitability by using basic information like the cast of the film.
There are, however, some reservations surrounding using expensive artificial intelligence to determine the success of a film. The fact remains that the machines usually use an algorithm to learn what has worked in the past. But this does not leave room for accuracy on the occasion of a possible shift in taste and culture. These are factors that are very susceptible to change.
A big example was when a software predicted that Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” would make about $56 million in revenue. The film ended up making $176 million instead. It also predicted that the tragicomic story of Tommy Wiseau’s cult, “The Disaster Room” would make only $10 million. However, it made $21 million instead.
Netflix also uses a data-driven algorithm to make suggestions to viewers. According to the video streaming company, the recommendation algorithm costs about a billion dollars a year.