Big data baloney watch: Blockbusters-by-numbers

I realize this is a little outside this blog’s wheelhouse, but given some of the coverage we’ve done on so-called "big data" analysis, I was interested to read this Times article on how Hollywood studios are supposedly using advanced statistics to make decisions on film scripts: 

A chain-smoking former statistics professor named Vinny Bruzzese — “the reigning mad scientist of Hollywood,” in the words of one studio customer — has started to aggressively pitch a service he calls script evaluation. For as much as $20,000 per script, Mr. Bruzzese and a team of analysts compare the story structure and genre of a draft script with those of released movies, looking for clues to box-office success. His company, Worldwide Motion Picture Group, also digs into an extensive database of focus group results for similar films and surveys 1,500 potential moviegoers. What do you like? What should be changed?

“Demons in horror movies can target people or be summoned,” Mr. Bruzzese said in a gravelly voice, by way of example. “If it’s a targeting demon, you are likely to have much higher opening-weekend sales than if it’s summoned. So get rid of that Ouija Board scene.”

Bowling scenes tend to pop up in films that fizzle, Mr. Bruzzese, 39, continued. Therefore it is statistically unwise to include one in your script. “A cursed superhero never sells as well as a guardian superhero,” one like Superman who acts as a protector, he added.

Again, I’m no expert on Hollywood, but it sounds like what Bruzzese is doing is predicting the success of new movies based on similar previously released movies — which doesn’t really seem all that new. I recently watched a documentary on the career of Stanley Kubrick, which noted that the studio had pulled funding on his planned Napoleon biopic because another Napoleon movie had flopped at the box office. In a New Yorker profile from last year, filmmaker Lana Wachowski recalled that when she and her brother were trying to make the Matrix, studios were reluctant because the economic models they were using were based on Johnny Mnemonic — another cyberpunk thriller starring Keanu Reeves that had been a flop. 

In that case, the modeling was way off, and I’m sure there are cases when it’s been correct. But this does seem to be one of an increasing number of cases of old-fashioned statistical analysis being dressed up as "big data." And if studios are really buying the argument that because "bowling scenes tend to pop up in films that fizzle,"  it’s the bowling scenese that are causing the films to sizzle, then Hollywood’s in worse shape than I thought.