Information Cascades and The Grinch
With holiday season just around the corner, nothing brings together families like a wholesome movie night. The makers of the animated retelling of Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch, took full advantage of this knowledge when releasing their movie on November 9 of this year. Erich Schwartzel ‘s article describes the movie’s immense success on opening weekend, bringing in $66 million in the United States and Canada.
The idea of retelling a story links to multiple ideas discussed in class. To begin, fans of the original Dr. Seuss stories have a direct benefit in viewing the classic Christmas tale in theatres. They have private information about the quality of the story and the enjoyment they experienced when first coming across it, and this drives them to make the independent decision of going to watch the movie.
Another direct-benefit of viewing an extremely popular movie is one of social consequence. If several of your friends have seen the movie, then it is in your interest to see the movie as well, so as to be “in the loop.” If everyone is discussing the movie at a party, it is not socially beneficial for you to be unable to participate. Thus, you go to see the movie in order to not be the odd one out.
Finally, there is also information-based reasoning in viewing an extremely popular movie. If several people have already gone to see it, they have conveyed information that the movie is worth seeing. Because of this, when you see that the movie is doing really well, despite the nature of your private information, you will likely go to see the movie due to the “wisdom of the crowds,” in this case, because there is a general consensus that the movie is good.
Due to these ideas presented in class, which are almost intuitive when applied to the information cascades of a successful movie, we can understand why The Grinch did so well in the box office this weekend.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/grinch-gets-jump-on-holiday-box-office-1541961069?mod=hp_lista_pos3