Recent articles on the Film Data Blog

Each week I look at a different film industry topic, focusing on the data and statistics to reveal what's really going on.

What percentage of actors are willing to perform nude?

June 10, 2019 1 comment

On-screen nudity has always been a contentious topic for new actors.

Many movies and television shows have small roles for actors who are willing to bare their bodies, meaning that if an up-and-coming actor disrobes on-screen, they can potentially give their CV a boost.

On the other hand, doing so means that there will forever be video clips of them naked online: something that would make the vast majority of people uncomfortable.

We cannot get inside the head of every actor facing this choice, but we are able to measure what actors mark on their professional profile in relation to their willingness to perform nude. The data for today’s piece comes from my database of every working actor in the UK who has a public …

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Is acting a profession dominated by the young?

June 3, 2019 3 comments

I have been asked a number of times over the years to study actors and the acting profession.

The interested parties tend to fall into one of two camps:

  • Young, fresh-faced up-and-coming actors looking to understand how they can best succeed in their exciting new career of acting.
  • Working professional actors asking why the industry is so biased, unfair and looking for evidence as to whether they should quit or battle through for another year.

    • It’s tricky to do a small amount of research on the topics at hand.  To properly study the profession, I would need to build a huge database of every actor working in the UK, at all levels, along with all manner of details about them, including their level of …

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    How far in advance are movie release dates announced?

    May 27, 2019 6 comments

    Earlier this month, Disney published release dates for their upcoming slate of movies, including their newly expanded roster of titles acquired when they bought rival studio Fox.

    This included a domestic theatrical release date (i.e. when the movie will open in American and Canadian cinemas) for Avatar 5 of 17th December 2027.

    Yup, the date has been fixed a whopping 3,144 days ahead of the actual release.

    In many cases, the release date is literally the only piece of information revealed about an upcoming movie – even before the movie’s title.  Disney’s future release schedule currently contains dates for 29 “untitled” films, including:

    • Twelve movies called “Untitled Disney Live Action”
    • Eight called “Untitled Marvel”
    • Four “Untitled Pixar” (although only two of them are described as animations)
    • Three …
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    Are video game movies the worst type of adaptations?

    May 20, 2019 5 comments

    The recent release of Pokémon Detective Pikachu has prompted some readers to get in touch and ask about the quality of movies based on video games.

    Most of the questions were variations of: “Are video game movies the worst type of movie adaptations?

    To answer this, I looked at all movies released in US cinemas between 1993 and 2018, inclusive. (See the Note section for a more detailed explanation of the dataset and sources).

    I’m going to use the Metacritic score and IMDb rating to serve as measures of quality from the perspective of film critics and film audiences, respectively.

    Let’s first acquaint ourselves with the genre.

    A primer in video game movies

    The first movie adapted from a video game was 1993’s Super Mario Bros and in …

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