Deserving research

Hidalgo et al published, in revision last week, "The effect of social interactions in the primary life cycle of motion pictures". From their abstract:

We model the consumption life cycle of theater attendance for single movies by taking into account the size of the targeted group and the effect of social interactions. We contrast the model with empirical data from the film industry obtaining good agreement with the diverse types of behaviors empirically found in the data. The model grants a quantitative measure of the valorization of this cultural good based on the relative values of the coupling between agents who have watched the movie and the ones who have not.

— Hidalgo et al, 2005.

(Strikes proud '50s man-of-science-proudly-declaring-a-new-era pose) In other words, gentlemen, we can now tell, regardless of studio spin and hype, if a picture is, in fact, an execrable bomb, only getting press due to a marketing budget larger than the GNP of several mid-sized industrial democracies.

You listenin', Hollywood? We're onto you. Be afraid.