Explaining Global Box-Office Tastes in Hollywood Films: Homogenization of National Audiences’ Movie Selections

Abstract

This study examines the cross-country homogeneity of audience tastes in theatrical consumption of Hollywood films. It constructs empirical schemes to measure and explain similarities between national cinema audiences in box-office acceptance of common sets of Hollywood movies, using annual 2002-2007 panel data of ticket-sales receipts worldwide at the country-by-film level. The results show that countries more culturally like the United States tend to have box-office tastes more closely resembling those of American audiences for the same Hollywood titles than other countries do. The similarity in movie taste is also positively related to an importing country’s cinema market size. Moreover, the tastes of individual countries have converged with those of American audiences over the years. Also, correlational statistics calculated from the country-by-film cross-tabulations of box-office sales uncover the trend that the world’s tastes have become increasingly homogeneous.