Stephen Follows - Film industry data and education

Using data to determine if Die Hard is a Christmas movie

December 16, 2018 7 comments

Ok, enough bickering and fighting. Let’s settle this once and for all in the only way I know how – going into a topic in way too much detail.

As we prepare to enter the year 32 ADH (a.k.a. After Die Hard), the world is gripped by a constantly nagging question.

No, it’s not “Why does everyone call Hans Gruber and his gang ‘terrorists’ when they were clearly bank robbers?”

Today we’re going to use data to answer the question “Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?”

Along the way, we’re going to test Die Hard’s Christmas bona fides against all movies in US cinemas for the past thirty years, using a variety of methods.

I have put details of my sources and methodology at the …

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The data behind terrible, terrible movies

December 10, 2018 5 comments

Last week, I used the release of Robin Hood as a catalyst for an article about box office flops. Normally, I don’t like to single films out for undue criticism but sometimes it can’t be avoided. I’ll try and be more restrained in future articles.

This week, I’m turning to the completely different topic of terrible, terrible movies – such as the recent release of Robin Hood. The film has received an average score of 32 out of 100 from film critics (just 15% of reviewers gave it a positive review) and it has an IMDb score of 5.3 out of 10. Also, I saw it and I want my time back.

To try and make lemonade out of this lemon, I decided …

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Is the number of box office flops increasing?

December 3, 2018 4 comments

In the last few weeks, there has been a resurgence of news articles about movie flops (sometimes called ‘box office bombs’). These have been sparked by recent under-performing releases such as London Fields, Robin Hood and The Nutcracker and the Four Realms and fueled by the public’s Schadenfreude at watching big movies fail.

A few readers have asked me about the wider trends behind flops, so I thought I’d turn to the data to have a look.

The very first thing to say on the topic is that whether a movie has flopped is often a subjective judgement. A small number of releases will have failed by everyone’s measurement but many box office disappointments will only be regarded as flops by some …

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Are movies dominated by a small number of old male composers?

November 26, 2018 4 comments

Last week, a reader emailed to ask “How many composers actually work in Hollywood?!” They then added: “It seems to me the same old men score all the movies”.

It’s a great question so I thought I’d take a look and, along the way, see what else I could discover about film composers.

I used my dataset of all films released in US cinemas in the thirty years between 1988 and 2017 and focused on everyone who received a composer credit.

Top composers rule the sector

Across my dataset of thirty years of movies, 4,749 people received a composing credit. The vast majority of film composers did not work on another film after that initial credit (although they may have worked on other types …

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