Movies represent a central icon of culture, and a substantial source of economic investment. Past efforts to predict movie success have relied on a variety of analytic methods, and the rate and spectacular examples of movie failure to provide return on investment has marked such methods as seriously flawed. More recently, social media have provided a new set of potential analytics to track and predict movie success. Investigations to date have provided mixed results. This study seeks to use a geospatially-sensitive method of tracking Twitter hashtags and movie titles, both prior and subsequent to movie release in the U.S. market, to predict movie box office receipts. Key words/terms: Box office, Hollywood, movie, social media, Twitter, tweets.
