Each week I look at a different topic around the film industry, focusing on the data and statistics which reveal what’s going on.
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 […]
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 […]
In the past few months, I have received a growing number of questions relating to international collaboration on movies. Some relate to the individual level of cast and crew working across borders while others focus on films as commercial products manufactured in more than one country. It’s hard to tell why the topic of international […]
One of the reasons it’s hard to make your first movie is that much of the information you need is not available. While we can all read granular box office figures online, it’s often hard to reliably discover how much a movie cost to make and it’s near impossible to know how they spent that […]
Three years ago, I looked at Hollywood’s switch from shooting on film to using digital acquisition methods. Since then, I have received a number of questions about the topic. Some are requests to update the piece with more recent data while others ask for more detail on how the use of digital formats differs between […]
Last week, the UK’s film censorship body, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), announced new rules on the depiction of sexual violence on screen. The BBFC’s certification guidelines are updated every five years after extensive public consultation. Their most recent study highlighted the public’s worries about seeing sexual violence on the big screen and the “pornification” […]
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 […]
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 […]
Boxing movie Creed II opens in a few weeks and the early reviews suggest that it will be worth watching. This has spurred me on to investigate a couple of related questions asked by readers about sports movies. Nada asked about the accuracy of the industry adage that “sports films don’t work” and Jason asked “Am I […]
Today’s topic was suggested by my wife (hello, honey!). For the longer story as to how this topic came up, see the epilogue at the end of the article. For now, I’ll focus on what she suggested I research: Are romantic comedies shorter (and do they receive poorer reviews) than non-comedic romance movies? I built a dataset of all movies […]
