Earning $167 million dollars in domestic box office and $368 million dollars worldwide, Gone Girl was a solid box office hit. Costing a modest $61 million dollars in production plus a little over $30 million dollars in domestic marketing spending (P&A), Gone Girl was not just a box office hit but a rare one becoming profitable based on box office revenue alone.

Notably, the novel and the movie’s story line were great, but movies with only a good story line do not always sell in the box office. In this article, we will show evidence of why Gone Girl was successful but we will do so only using data available prior to Gone Girl’s filming to show how its success was foreseeable. All the analysis will be done using Greenlight Essentials’ patent pending Analytic Terminal.

Let’s first look at the major cast of Gone Girl. As the protagonist of this psychological mystery thriller, looking at movies with Ben Affleck would be a great place to start. From the graph below, we can see that 64% of thriller movies starring Ben Affleck are above the green line, which is the benchmark average given a movie’s marketing spending. Affleck’s performance in thriller genre is already enough to weigh the odds in Gone Girl’s favour.



Continuing to look at common attributes in movies with Ben Affleck we can see that audiences particularly enjoy when he is paired with a romance element. We note this as the graph below is showing 78% of movies with romance element starring Ben Affleck are above the benchmark average. Casting him as the person who fell in love with Amy in Gone Girl would of course only boost the chance of success for the movie.

Second, let’s look at Rosamund Pike. Even though her overall performance was not as impressive as Ben’s, but her performance in movies with attribute surprise ending was able to tip the scale of odds, as shown in the graph below:

Furthermore, if we only look at movies starring Rosamund Pike that are above the benchmark line, the attribute femme fatale popped up as both of the movies starring Rosamund Pike with femme fatale are above the benchmark line, as shown below:

The main cast of Gone Girl was, statistically, a suitable fit and had shown a promising performance when utilized in a movie with the attributes shared with Gone Girl.

Now let’s look at the attributes of Gone Girl. Being a novel adaption in psychological mystery thriller genre helps the movie very little to none. About 56% above the benchmark shown in the graph:

However, if we look at the performance of psychological mystery thriller movies with attribute missing person (which is the reason why it is called Gone Girl), the number jumps to 67%. This suggests that audience enjoyed watching missing person thrillers with a psychological twist. As shown in the graph below:

Moreover, as shown in the graph above, the attribute husband wife relationship is the brightest on the list. Gone Girl definitely contained husband and wife relations. It turns out that combining husband wife relationship with missing person in a psych mystery thriller produces 100% performance over the benchmark! This suggests that audiences especially enjoy seeing a husband and wife relationship mixed in a missing person thriller that has some psycho twist (sound familiar to Gone Girl?).



All of the above evidence indicates that Gone Girl has promising odds to be a solid box office hit than any average movie, and it was definitely a wise investment choice. Note again that all of the above evidence is generated using only data available before the filming of Gone Girl. Therefore, its success was also foreseeable.

Greenlight Essentials is a company that is dedicated to helping entertainment professionals better understand movie data and bring big data analysis to the film industry. We plan to do this by creating software that allows users with neither programming nor mathematics background to explore and discover repeatable patterns from decades of film data. This way, without watching decades of films or gathering past audience reactions, industry professionals can have a better understanding of what combinations of elements in a film would draw in an audience and what combinations of elements in a film would repel an audience.

Contact us at: jack.z@glessentials.com

The information in this document is provided to you by Greenlight Essentials as an estimation for informational purposes only, based on third party, publicly available information. Information in this document was generated using Greenlight Essential’s proprietary software program and media database to compare publicly available information about this film with historical film and market data. Greenlight Essentials does not assess data for quality or otherwise; such data may not be accurate, and is subject to change. Metrics in this document are based solely on algorithms that are designed to detect data patterns, not on any opinions or judgment exercised by Greenlight Essentials. Accordingly, there are no warranties, express or implied, with respect to the contents of this document. In no event shall Greenlight Essentials be liable to you or any party for any direct, indirect, special or consequential damages related to the contents of this document, including without limitation, reliance on the information presented. It is solely your responsibility to evaluate the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of the information in this document.