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Actors' facial similarity and its impact on US movies' box-office performance in East and South-East Asia

Actors' facial similarity and its impact on US movies' box-office performance in East and... Anecdotal evidence suggests that casting actors with similar facial features in a movie can pose challenges in foreign markets, hindering the audience's ability to recognize and remember characters. Extending developments in the literature on the cross-race effect, we hypothesize that facial similarity – the extent to which the actors starring in a movie share similar facial features – will reduce the country-level box-office performance of US movies in East and South-East Asia (ESEA) countries.Design/methodology/approachWe assembled data from various secondary data sources on US non-animation movies (2012–2021) and their releases in ESEA countries. Combining the data resulted in a cross-section of 2,616 movie-country observations.FindingsActors' facial similarity in a US movie's cast reduces its box-office performance in ESEA countries. This effect is weakened as immigration in the country, internet penetration in the country and star power increase and strengthened as cast size increases.Originality/valueThis first study on the effects of cast's facial similarity on box-office performance represents a novel extension to the growing literature on the antecedents of movies' box-office performance by being at the intersection of the two literature streams on (1) the box-office effects of cast characteristics and (2) the antecedents, in general, of box-office performance in the ESEA region. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png International Marketing Review Emerald Publishing

Actors' facial similarity and its impact on US movies' box-office performance in East and South-East Asia

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References (56)

Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
© Emerald Publishing Limited
ISSN
0265-1335
DOI
10.1108/imr-06-2023-0118
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Anecdotal evidence suggests that casting actors with similar facial features in a movie can pose challenges in foreign markets, hindering the audience's ability to recognize and remember characters. Extending developments in the literature on the cross-race effect, we hypothesize that facial similarity – the extent to which the actors starring in a movie share similar facial features – will reduce the country-level box-office performance of US movies in East and South-East Asia (ESEA) countries.Design/methodology/approachWe assembled data from various secondary data sources on US non-animation movies (2012–2021) and their releases in ESEA countries. Combining the data resulted in a cross-section of 2,616 movie-country observations.FindingsActors' facial similarity in a US movie's cast reduces its box-office performance in ESEA countries. This effect is weakened as immigration in the country, internet penetration in the country and star power increase and strengthened as cast size increases.Originality/valueThis first study on the effects of cast's facial similarity on box-office performance represents a novel extension to the growing literature on the antecedents of movies' box-office performance by being at the intersection of the two literature streams on (1) the box-office effects of cast characteristics and (2) the antecedents, in general, of box-office performance in the ESEA region.

Journal

International Marketing Review – Emerald Publishing

Published: Apr 10, 2024

Keywords: Actors; Facial similarity; International box-office; East Asia; South-East Asia; Cross-race effect

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