Motion Picture Industry Managerial Report

When creating a movie to release in such a competitive industry, assurance is needed that there will be a return on investment as well as that their movie will be well-received by the public and entertaining to make it a popular hit at the box office. Using a sample of 100 motion pictures from 2005 and numerical methods of descriptive statistics, including measures of location, variability, distribution shape and the detection of outliers, the motion picture industry can be analyzed more specifically in order to learn how these variables play a part in the success of a motion picture. The main concern of management in this case would be with regard to revenue, profit, and entertainment. In this case study it was found that there was a high correlation between the total gross sales and the opening gross sales, time spent in the Top 60 and the number of theaters played in, indicating that movie makers should take these variables into consideration when trying to predict or plan for a successful movie.

The motion picture industry is a cutthroat, multi-billion dollar industry involving a diverse number of contributors to making a successful movie. From production crews, actors, and directors to marketing crews, distribution companies and movie theaters, there is substantial time and effort put into these creations and there are four variables commonly used to measure the return on this investment. These variables include the opening weekend gross sales, total gross sales, number of theaters showing the movie, and weeks in the top sixty of gross sales.

The first variable, opening gross, can inform movie makers how anticipated and well-received a movie is and can be a good indication of how much money the movie will earn overall. After calculating several central tendency measures (mean, median, and mode), one can create a histogram and see the opening weekend gross sales are heavily skewed to the right. The median opening gross sales of 0.40,