Each week I look at a different topic around the film industry, focusing on the data and statistics which reveal what’s going on.
Today, I’m sharing another project I carried out for the American Film Market along with Bruce Nash from The Numbers. In this article, we’re going to look at the performance of dramas, and what it takes for them to be successful. The moniker ‘drama’ is often maligned by distribution professionals as not being a real […]
Four times a year, the American Film Market asks Bruce Nash and I to crunch the numbers on a topic relevant to the segment of their audience that are low budget producers. In the past, we’ve looked at topics such as what types of independent films make the most money, patterns among breakout hits at different budget […]
Today’s topic is one I’ve had on my ‘to do’ list for a while and it took the help of four students to gather all the data. We looked at the key dates behind Hollywood studio movies in order to work out roughly how long the average Hollywood movie takes to make. We built a […]
Today’s article is another joint project with Bruce Nash from The Numbers. In a series of research studies for the American Film Market, we looked at what it takes for films to break out at different ends of the indie budget spectrum. We’ve looked at the most profitable low-budget films (with budgets under $3 million), those costing $10 […]
Last week, I looked at how the composition of crews on Hollywood movies has changed over the years. This piece led a few people to ask questions on related topics, one of which I will address today. John asked:”From your datasets can you see which people have worked the most often?” To answer the question, I […]
In the past, I’ve looked at how big a movie crew can get, for both UK films and Hollywood movies. But I was recently asked by a reader how the composition of such crews has changed over time. Which departments are getting larger? Which jobs are on the rise and which are waning? To answer […]
Last week, I shared the results of a research project I conducted into the genre of global film production. Today, I’m drilling into those numbers to look at how filmmaking tastes change between different countries. This comes from my dataset of every movie I could find that was produced over the past twenty years – […]
A few years ago, I looked at what genres are disproportionately popular with cinema audiences around the world. We learned that Italians enjoyed more comedies, that Asian nations love action, Europeans love drama and that romance burns brightest among Mexican film fans. That study looked at how films were received in cinemas, but a few weeks ago, it occurred […]
New figures released last week about UK film production in 2017 have prompted questions from readers about the health and evolving nature of the UK film industry. I’m focusing on the production sector because otherwise it would be far too big a topic for one article. I’ve split the key changes into five points (and a bonus […]
This is the third instalment of a four-part series chronicling trends and changes in the film industry. To compile the list, I have been back through all of my old research, conducted new projects, read outside research and solicited suggestions from my industry readership (thank you to everyone who contributed). The result is a list […]
