Movies in 2023 - Can you predict box office sales from IMDB votes?
Introduction
In my previous articles, I looked to see if it’s possible to predict the online voting for a movie from particular features, such as the director / producer / writer’s previous film ratings.
It worked with some success but was unable to predict the big swings of movie blockbusters or those that really fail to hit the mark.
Whilst reviewing the prediction accuracy (I built an automated integration and live dashboard), I thought it was time to bring in some more data to see if any other data insights would emerge.
Predicting box office sales before the movie hits the screens would prove as difficult as the user ratings but whilst digging around in the data, I stumbled across a fascinating, albeit probably obvious insight - that the number of votes correlates with the box office success. After all, to vote one has presumably seen the movie at the cinema.
However, rather than looking historically at what has been for a direct correlation, I was intrigued to know if the volume of votes from when the film is released can help predict the box office sales?