Entertainment Science by Thorsten Hennig-Thurau & Mark B. Houston

Author:Thorsten Hennig-Thurau & Mark B. Houston
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783319892924
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Star Characteristics

When it comes to a star’s impact on the success of movies, it matters a great deal what “kind” of star we are talking about. Our analyses show that when the star is a “recent” one, which we defined as having been included in the Quigley star power list within the last three years prior to the release of the new movie, North American revenues are increased by 33% on average. When the star was only on the list four or more years ago, his or her participation did not boost the box office in any significant way. We find similar differences for leading versus supporting roles; a star who is top-billed adds 24% to revenues on average, whereas the same star makes no significant difference when not listed first.

We also find that audiences favor younger (24–41 years) and “medium”-age (43–53) stars (who both boost box office by about 20%) over older stars (who do not offer a statistical advantage). At least in our data, audiences do not discriminate in their interest between male and female stars, everything else equal, a finding that contrasts with the assumption that male stars are more valuable and which is often named as a justification of the “Hollywood pay gap” (i.e., females get paid less; Berg 2015). Lindner et al. (2015) report a similar result, finding that once you control for budget sizes and other film factors, moviegoers do not penalize films that have a female star. Finally, results show that having one star in a movie is nice, but having more than one is much nicer—a second star multiplies the star effect not by 2, but by 3.7!

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