Thanksgiving means different things to different people. Sure, it’s about quality time with family, the expression of gratitude, over-eating and NFL football. But, let’s face it, after a couple of days cooped up at grandma’s house, it’s a great weekend to get out and see a movie. As always, the question is which one to see, especially since Hollywood is serving up its own Thankgiving cornucopia of new films to check out.
With that in mind, researchers at Unanimous AI asked UNU to help you decide. UNU is a Swarm Intelligence platform that lets people think together as a closed-loop system, using swarming algorithms to converge on optimized answers. In this case, the swarm combined the real-time insights of 30 U.S. movie fans of mixed age and gender. They were asked to view trailers for five movies opening Thanksgiving weekend and provide reactions to the swarm intelligence algorithms. Here are the films the Swarm reviewed.
These movie couldn’t be more different, from a Disney animated movie, to a Brad Pitt period film, to a Bad Santa sequel. As such, it didn’t make sense to compare them head to head. Instead, the researchers normalized the comparison by asking the Swarm Intelligence to predict which films would be viewed by their target audience primarily in the theater vs primarily streamed at home. 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.
The animated Disney movie Moana received perhaps the most enthusiastic response from the swarm. As you can see from this replay, the Swarm quickly converged on IN THEATER, indicating strong sentiment that Disney-film lovers will see this one at the Cineplex, as opposed to waiting for Netflix. So if you’re stuck with the kids, or you simply love Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, you’ll probably enjoy Moana.
On the other hand, the Swarm was not feeling warm and fuzzy about Bad Santa 2. With the success of the original, studio execs doubled down on Billy Bob Thornton as the crusty mall Santa, adding more star power in Kathy Bates and Christine Hendricks. But the Swarm felt most fans of this type of film would wait to see it AT HOME.
Perhaps the biggest insight came from the Swarm’s consideration of Warren Beatty’s new effort, Rules Don’t Apply. Initially the Swarm had strong sentiment that folks would want to see this one IN THEATER, but then it changed course to land squarely on view AT HOME.
This is where UNU delivers deeper insights. As you can see from this faction analysis, a poll would have predicted that moviegoers would want to see this in theaters, inferring a successful box office run for Rules Don’t Apply, but UNU allowed this Swarm to ultimately converge on a different answer.
While polls are polarizing, revealing the divisions among groups, swarms are unifying, driving groups to converge on the sentiment they can best agree upon. How? The fact is, individual views are not monolithic, they’re complex – people willing to consider multiple options, each associated with different emotions and convictions. Swarming finds the answer that optimizes the collective support among the full group.
Here’s a summary of all the Swarm outputs, including Lion and Allied, in addition to the others mentioned above.
Got a question for the Swarm? Drop us a line….
