As the movie industry’s blockbuster summer season rolls on, the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab has raised the curtain on a box-office predictor tool based on Twitter analysis.

The USC Annenberg Film Forecaster uses new software, called Big Sheets, which measures not only the volume of tweets mentioning upcoming movies – it also gauges their sentiment. The data is fed into a graphic that shows a movie’s positive and negative buzz.

The result: how buzz translates into box-office performance. Last week, the analysis of more than 1 million movie-related tweets showed the premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 as the star of Twitter movie chatter. It was the subject of nearly 53 percent of the tweets that expressed sentiment.

In May, the tool correctly predicted a clamor for Hangover 2 that resulted in a $100 million opening over Memorial Day weekend.

The tool also has been used to gauge sentiment surrounding this year’s Arab uprisings as well as potential Republican presidential candidates.

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