UNU’s Picks—Movies for the Weekend of December 16th

This weekend marks the arrival of the Rogue One: a Star Wars story. This newest saga in the Star Wars universe has been long anticipated by fans of the series and movie lovers alike, but its not the only movie opening this weekend. Two other Oscar contenders – Manchester by the Sea and Collateral Beauty will also be in wide release for the first time.

So, what should we expect from this weekend at the movies? To predict moviegoers’ behavior, researchers at Unanimous AI asked UNU to weigh in on whether the three films being released this weekend will attract an audience. UNU is a Artificial Swarm Intelligence platform that lets people think together as a closed-loop system, using swarming algorithms to converge on optimized answers. Here is a clickable summary of the Swarm’s responses:

 

After watching the trailers, the Swarm seems relatively uninspired by both Collateral Beauty and Manchester by the Sea, but Rogue One is a different story. The Swarm predicts that Star Wars fans will show up in droves ( drones? ) to the theater for the first stand-alone film in this anthology series, outperforming even the already sky-high industry expectations.

That doesn’t mean that the Star Wars films are immune to criticism, however. The Swarm revealed that, despite its confidence in Rogue One’s box office potential, the franchise is in danger of over-exposure and repetitiveness. Perhaps the fanbase’s appetite for more stories in the Star Wars universe isn’t as insatiable as we’ve been lead to believe?

star wars repetitive

How did we measure? The Swarm combined the real-time insights of 30 U.S. movie fans of mixed age and gender. They were asked to view the trailers above and provide reactions to the swarm intelligence algorithms. Each time, we asked the Swarm to tell us whether they thought the movie would do better in the theater or streaming, how the movie would perform against industry expectations, and how much they would pay to see the film.

As you can see in the chart above, the Swarm revealed some hard truths about some films that are already generating some serious buzz. Whether or not a film is deemed “theater-worthy” by likely fans is a strong indicator of whether or not it’s worth your movie dollar—and a predictor of what types of movies will be made next.

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