Network Effects of Similar Movies
Why are some movies simply more popular than others, especially if the subject of the movie is extremely similar? The digital spy outlines 14 instances where movies of the same topic/concept were released during the same year and which one became the box office victor. The above example demonstrates one instance of such, the Matrix and eXistenZ, in which the Matrix won with a whopping $467 million in the box office compared to eXistenZ’s feeble $2.9 million.
One obvious reason for this difference is the advertising it gets from theaters. Certain movies are more greatly advertised than others through the usage of posters, letterboards, more digital screentime on digital billboards, etc. In the case of the Matrix vs. eXistenZ, the target audience is the same and there is a decision to be made about which movie is better by the theaters that display the movies so that they understand which one to advertise more. The moviegoers initially hear the decisions of their acquaintances and friends who came earlier and they each also have their own information about each movie. If the first moviegoer finds information that signals The Matrix is better, he/she will guess that it is better and watch it and tell others about it. A person will adopt the behavior of their acquaintances when watching movies instead of direct friends because they are more likely to attend the movie with their close friends. Each friend group, in this case, can be considered a node with independent thresholds that switch from choosing to watch one movie to another, with links to other friend groups that they are aware of. If a friend group’s threshold is exceeded in the amount of other groups who have switched or preferred a certain movie, they will also watch the same movie. This is how the switch would begin for groups who initially wished to watch eXistenZ.
But as referred to earlier, a more important aspect of a movie’s success in relation to another comes from its marketing. Let’s assume that it is 1999 and local residents of a town, Ithaca, are choosing between watching The Matrix or eXistenZ. When they first came out, a theater believes that there is an equal probability (1/2) of each movie being the better option and they only wish to advertise one movie heavily of the sci-fi genre since there are many more movies of other genres. The probability that a person entering the theater chooses The Matrix given that it is the better option becomes 2/3 and ⅓ given that it’s not the better option. The probability that a person chooses eXistenZ given that it is the better option is ⅔ and ⅓ if it is not . Lets suppose a theater is trying to advertise the better movie, they want to use Bayes rule to calculate which movie is better given that they just opened witnessed 3 groups purchasing a ticket for The Matrix and 1 group purchasing a ticket for eXistenZ in that order.
They can use Bayes rule to calculate Pr[Matrix is better| Matrix, Matrix, Matrix, eXistenZ] or Pr[M| M,M,M,E] for short. To do this we first calculate Pr[M,M,M, E| M] = ⅔ x ⅔ x ⅔ x ⅓ = 8/81. Then we calculate Pr[M,M,M,E] and another way for this to occur is if eXistenZ is better, so we calculate Pr[M,M,M,E|E] and add it to Pr[M,M,M, E| M] to solve for it after multiplying both probabilities by ½ because they both have a ½ chance of occuring. Pr[M,M,M,E| E]= ⅓ x ⅓ x ⅓ x ⅔ = 2/81. So we solve for Pr[M,M,M,E] by doing ½ x 8/81 + ½ x 2/81 = 8/162 + 2/162 = .0617. Finally we use Baye’s rule to solve Pr[M| M,M,M,E]= (Pr[M] x Pr[M,M,M, E| M])/Pr[M,M,M, E] which is (½ x 8/81)/.0617= 0.493/.0617=.8003. Therefore, the theater workers should correctly guess that there is a high chance that the Matrix is the better film and advertise it more heavily than eXistenZ, causing it to be the more popular movie in Ithaca’s theaters.
This phenomenon would occur not only in Ithaca, but in numerous other theaters across America. Once this initial hype is created through the way the theaters choose to advertise a certain movie, it grows in more popularity and more friend groups across America become aware of it and make the switch from wishing to watch eXistenZ if they were interested in it. Moreover, a switch would occur in groups that weren’t even interested in going to theaters if a movie draws enough hype, this would be a switch from “non movie watchers” to “Matrix watchers”, causing it again to increase in popularity thereby. This is the network dynamics of movie popularity when two movies are very similar.
https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a839587/twin-movies-phenomenon-identical-movies-released-together/