The Film Data Scientist returns to dig into what it means for a movie to be "dumb", and how movies are changing in this regard.

This article is part of my ‘Big Ideas’ series, in which I explore the evolving landscape of the film industry. Each instalment combines data, research, and analysis to go deep on a trend, idea or case ...

Hollywood cinema is not known to be a bastion of truth. It’s a place where entertainment and expediency are prioritised over accuracy and authenticity. It's frequently claimed that NASA uses the 1998 ...

A reader, Peter, got in touch to ask: People often complain about a sharp decline in the quality of film writing in the last 10-15 years. So my thinking is, are modern screenplays objectively worse? I ...

Colour is one of the quickest ways a poster can tell you what kind of film it’s selling. Before you’ve read the title or registered the actors, your brain has already clocked the palette and filed it ...

A few weeks ago, John August dropped me an email which included a simple question: "How accurate is the page-per-minute rule of thumb?" The rule John is referring to is that a film based on a ...

Yesterday, Donald Trump announced a plan to impose a 100% tariff on all foreign-made films. He claimed that international tax incentives were draining American productions from US soil and accused ...

A couple of years ago, I looked into whether erotic thrillers were indeed dying out or if it was just availability bias due to the fact that the main examples which come to mind are mostly from the ...

This is part two of my collaboration with Screendollars in which we spoke to 246 cinema owners and film professionals affiliated with exhibitors. We quizzed them on a range of topics, and their ...

This article is part of my ‘Big Ideas’ series, in which I explore the evolving landscape of the film industry. Each instalment will focus on one of the key shifts highlighted below, digging deeper ...

On the latest episode of the podcast Scriptnotes, the hosts, John August and Craig Mazin, were talking about Hallmark Christmas movies. Craig asked, “How many do we think there have been?” to which ...