World Media Economics and Management Conference 2016

This research study examines the relevance of film success factors for film professionals in German speaking countries. Although a large number of studies have investigated film success factors such as the cast, genre or template in published successful, predominantly Anglophone films; there is a lack of research on the perceived importance of these factors for commercial success by film professionals, in particular in German speaking are. A survey was carried out in the summer of 2015 with 99 screenwriters and producers from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Their preferences were determined based on a conjoint analysis of theoretically presumed success factors and subjected to cluster analysis. For the overall sample some of the success factors from the literature could be affirmed (stars, feel-good genres) in the perception of the professionals, others are not appreciated. Contrary to the literature the professionals do not value story templates but rather refer to original material. The study also shows that different types of screenwriters and producers attribute different importance to the success factors in our survey and assign different part-worth utilities to the values of those attributes. This results challenges the idea of universal success factors and calls for a case by case evaluation of success factors of films.