YBX – Young Box Office is a data-driven web platform designed to help small and independent cinemas optimize their movie programming for younger audiences. The system uses Big Data techniques combined with the OMDb API to analyze movie trends, popularity, ratings, and audience interest.
Cinema owners or managers can upload their own weekly datasets in CSV format (named as year-week.csv, e.g. 25-38.csv) into the /Data/ folder. These datasets typically contain box office and attendance information sourced from platforms like Movio Weekend Insights. YBX then enriches this data by fetching additional metadata from the OMDb API, such as genres, IMDb ratings, release years, and audience scores.
By combining local performance data with global movie metadata, YBX generates recommendations and insights on which movies are most likely to attract a younger demographic. This allows cinemas to make smarter, evidence-based scheduling decisions, reduce financial risk, and increase audience engagement.
The project was created by in collaboration with Banda, Tiebe, and Luca as part of the “Onderzoek en Onderwerpen” assignment for De Beun Heiloo, with the goal of applying data analysis and research methods to a real-world media and business problem.
In short, YBX turns raw movie statistics into actionable intelligence for cinemas that want to stay competitive in a youth-driven market.