Fox Is Using Google's Machine Learning to Predict What Movies You'll Like

Data scientists at 20th Century Fox and Google Cloud have developed machine-learning software that can analyze movie trailers and predict how likely people are to see those movies in theaters. A recent preprint research paper breaks down how the program, named Merlin, can now recognize objects and patterns in a trailer to understand movie scenes. Merlin can scan trailers and spot objects like "man with beard," "gun," "car," and decide whether the movie is an action flick or a crime drama based on the context in which those objects appear. "A trailer with a long close-up shot of a character is more likely for a drama movie," the study's authors write, "whereas a trailer with quick but frequent shots is more likely for an action movie." Merlin can use its knowledge of common tropes in trailers to understand how sequences of actions in trailers play into our expectations for genre films.