Fifteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

This paper studies the effect of assigning a foreign-born director on the outcome of a US-produced film. Using unique director-film matched data, I verify whether a foreign-born director bears higher talent than the native-born director using film box office and awards information as metrics. I found the following results: 1) A foreign-born director’s film is likely to get more numbers of Oscar nominations; 2) foreign-born director’s films on average receive a higher international box office, a lower domestic box office than their native-born counterparts, however, the disparity between foreign- and native-born directors in the box office has been reducing over time. It implies that foreign-born directors may bear a higher capability in filmmaking based on the peer-reviewed awards, and assigning a foreign-born director could have helped Hollywood films to be more appealing to the international market, however, the fact that comparative advantage of either foreign- or native-born directors has been diminishing over time could probably be a result of cultural globalization.