The Effect of Female Protagonists and Non-Sexist Dialogue on Domestic Box Office Revenue for Films Released Between 1995 to 2018

Authors

Chase Ochsner, Illinois Wesleyan UniversityFollow

Graduation Year

2021

Publication Date

Spring 2021

Embargo Period

2-9-2022

Comments

The author requested that this work be embargoed until February 9, 2022.

Advisor: Michael Seeborg

Committee Members: David Marvin, Phillip Oberg, James Plath

Special Thanks: Brian Udovich (Film Producer), James Shapiro (Entertainment Industry Executive)

Abstract

This research examines the correlation between box office revenue and films with female protagonists and films that pass the Bechdel Test. I extracted data from Box Office Mojo and Numbers.com for 1186 movies between 1995 to 2018 on several characteristics including the gender of the film’s protagonist, the presence of non-sexist dialogue (Bechdel Test), the genre of the movie, and the film’s box office revenue and budget. I created four OLS regression equations in SPSS and two logistic regression models in STATA to test my hypotheses. I found that having a female protagonist and passing the Bechdel Test are highly significant predictors of domestic box office revenue, increasing film revenue by nearly $15 million by having a female protagonist and nearly $23 million by passing the Bechdel Test.

Disciplines

Economics

Recommended Citation

Ochsner, Chase, "The Effect of Female Protagonists and Non-Sexist Dialogue on Domestic Box Office Revenue for Films Released Between 1995 to 2018" (2021). Honors Projects. 143.
https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/econ_honproj/143