Adobe claims to be 100% certain which summer blockbusters will flop

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

I have always found it fun to try and predict which movies are going to be big each year. Sometimes a surprising movie becomes a hit while a sure thing is completely ignored by audiences. Part of the fun is in trying to figure out what will happen. But, movies are a business and operate by a particular set of rules. One company has taken those rules and figured out a formula for which flicks will succeed and which will fail miserably.

Adobe has put together and tested their formula known as the Adobe Digital Index (ADI) which measures social media and trailer views for films in the weeks leading up to release to determine whether it will exceed the production budget during it’s domestic box office run. The ADI was tested last fall and Adobe claims a 100% accuracy after tested nine films including ENDER’S GAME, DELIVERY MAN, and 47 RONIN. So, what are their predictions for this summer?

According to their calculations, this weekend’s EDGE OF TOMORROW will flop as will THE EXPENDABLES 3 and Brett Ratner‘s HERCULES starring Dwayne Johnson. They also preducted JUPITER ASCENDING would flop, but that film has been pushed to February 2015. On the positive side, the ADI says this summer’s hit films will be THE FAULT IN OUR STARS, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION, THE PURGE: ANARCHY and HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2.

As a disclaimer, the ADI is not foolproof despite their 100% success claim. On one hand, they only measured criteria for these films from March 1 through May 10 of this year and several of these films did not have full trailers released by that time or were saving media releases for closer to their theatrical premieres. Plus, with studios looking more and more towards global box office, we cannot take these numbers as the be all end all.

In the end, movies like EDGE OF TOMORROW may not break the bank but they certainly can interest enough audiences worldwide to make them worth the risk. In a day and age when good movies flounder while generic formula flicks make tons of money, it would be nice to think that people go see movies that look good rather than consider numbers like these.

Go see EDGE OF TOMORROW when it opens in theaters, well, tomorrow.