Cast Your Ballots!
Does the presence of an election influence the profitability of a movie’s release in the first and second week of November?
A HYPOTHESIS
Sean Fennessy and Amanda Dobbs of The Big Picture Podcast noted there was no large movie slated to premier in early November, a time historically profitable for movie studios. They quireid if major elections caused movie studios to choose not to release potentially high earning films either because people would be busy or it could unintentionally add a political element to the films release.
Accounting for inflation, this study looks at the Opening Weekend and Total Domestic Gross for movies released on the first and second week of November from 1992 until 2023.
An Analysis
Some of the first weeks of November had the Friday premiere date fall over October 31st. Typically larger Halloween movies release earlier in September or October but some horror genre movies chose to release on October 31st which were lower earning,
For the first weekend, the Friday before a Election Day (Tuesday) it looks like elections had very little influence on earnings for movie studios despite that overlapping with early voting times.
In second week of November, after Election Day (Tuesday) we do see spikes in 20004 to 2012 with Election Years bringing in more earnings for movies released. This was the opposite of Sean and Amanda’s hypothesis. However from 1992 - 2000 we actually see dips in Election Year.
]This study does not factor in the economy, cultural attitude or general profitability for movie studios all which have influence over when major studios choose to release their pictures. Because those factors were omitted and there was no strong conclusion, we cannot prove the hypothesis.
However, in our final chart that shows percentage of Opening Weekend Gross out of Total Domestic Gross, we find that election years show lower opening weekend %s.