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Why are Hollywood movies bad?
I studied the data behind 2,271 movies to reveal why Hollywood's big budget fare is often so poor. It's not random but the the inevitable consequence of…
Jul 8
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Stephen Follows
25
1
5
Does the Black List find talent or launch it?
Every year the Black List crowns Hollywood's best unmade screenplays. I traced two decades of scripts and 1,682 writers to see if the list a brilliant…
Jul 6
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Stephen Follows
35
4
4
To what extent is AI being used in movies and TV today?
I went through every craft in post-production, from VFX and de-ageing to voice, dubbing and the cutting room, checking the AI hype against more than two…
Jul 1
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Stephen Follows
34
2
3
June 2026
How do people end up directing a top-grossing movie?
I have received a few questions from readers about the path to becoming a top movie director.
Jun 29
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Stephen Follows
26
3
2
How to make money in film when nobody can predict a hit
I read forty years of academic research and analysed 50,830 films to answer the question I get asked most. Here are the 18 ways people actually make…
Jun 24
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Stephen Follows
53
3
10
What is the most dangerous on-screen job in the movies?
I studied 69,832 on-screen deaths from 43,983 movies to calculate which on-screen jobs have the highest and lowest survival rates.
Jun 22
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Stephen Follows
17
1
Has Hollywood become more 'packaged' over the last fifteen years?
I traced who represented the key creatives on 2,058 big films at the moment each deal was struck, then counted how often it was all one agency.
Jun 18
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Stephen Follows
19
8
1
You have no idea how BIG Steven Spielberg is
Highest-grossing director in history. Most-thanked person in Oscar history. An actual word in the Oxford English Dictionary. And that's just the bits we…
Jun 15
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Stephen Follows
15
2
Are film directors getting older?
I analysed 4,690 director credits across 4,203 movies to examine how the age of film directors has shifted over nine decades of cinema.
Jun 11
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Stephen Follows
16
1
3
How much of a film festival's income comes from entry fees?
I pulled the tax returns of every US film festival I could find, going back a decade, to work out how much of their income comes from filmmaker fees.
Jun 8
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Stephen Follows
23
4
2
Does a famous cast mean a better film?
I crunched the numbers on 2,756 films to see if there is a connection between how audiences and critics rate them and the cast’s star power.
Jun 4
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Stephen Follows
25
3
3
Do famous actors pay off at the box office?
I studied the data behind 3,052 films to look at whether having a famous lead actor actually helps as much as the industry believes it does.
Jun 1
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Stephen Follows
30
11
5
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