SoylentNews

SOME MOVIES ARE obvious hits. Like, for example, Avengers: Infinity War, which made a record-breaking $258 million at the domestic box office last weekend, filling seats and the pockets of Marvel Studios parent company Disney. But not every summer—or spring, or fall—blockbuster has the benefit of 10 years and 18 movies of built-up audience goodwill. So while the Mouse House knew they had a potentially earth-shattering hit on their hands well before opening night, other studios trying to catch up have no way of predicting whether their latest attempts to hit big will do so.

Actually, they might. Machine learning is everywhere, and artificial intelligence is no longer just a Spielberg-Kubrick collaboration. These days, Amazon can practically anticipate when you might need toilet paper and Netflix can predict your next binge, so it only seems natural that Hollywood will start using AI to predict the next big blockbuster, or at least improve its chances of becoming one. In fact, several companies are already working on algorithmic ways to predict box office results. Whether or not algorithms are better at picking winners than studio execs, however, is another matter—one that’s still far from resolved.

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/artificial-intelligence-box-office-predictions/ [wired.com]

Original Submission