Mumbai: Media and entertainment research firm Ormax Media has launched First-Day Box Office (FBO), a scientific box office forecasting model.

The model forecasts the opening day net collections at domestic box office for unreleased films up to seven weeks before release.

FBO is being targeted at film studios and producers, as well as media agencies and advertisers who associate with films through co-branded promotions and in-film placement. Existing subscribers of Cinematix will be upgraded to an FBO-enabled version of the product at an incremental cost.

It takes into account a series of input parameters. These include inputs from Ormax Media?s film campaign tracking product Cinematix, which tracks the Buzz, Reach and Appeal of unreleased Bollywood films for almost three years now.Cinematix covers 19 cities across India, accounting for more than 95 per cent of domestic box office coverage.

Other FBO model inputs include release scale, holiday and festival factors, audience profile and other such variables on which normative data has been built by Ormax Media over the last four years.

FBO forecast will be available to subscribers everyday from seven weeks before the release of a film till the day of the release. The model has been tested to accurately forecast the first-day box office collections of at least 85 per cent films with less than 10 per cent error margin, the company said.

Ormax Media CEO Shailesh Kapoor said, "The model is extremely valuable as the box office estimate will be available seven weeks in advance. That will give the stakeholders enough time to take corrective action. Also, it is not a back-of-the-envelope prediction of the box office. It is a statistically tested forecast model that has self-learning built into it, guaranteeing progressively better results with time."