Each week I look at a different topic around the film industry, focusing on the data and statistics which reveal what’s going on.
A few weeks ago, John August dropped me an email which included a simple question: “How accurate is the page-per-minute rule of thumb?” The rule John is referring to is that a film based on a (properly formatted) 90-page screenplay will be roughly 90 minutes long. This is useful to a number of people, including; […]
Last week, I looked at the average number of credited screenwriters on movies. This gave me an insight into how many scripts were written by just one person, and how many were written as part of a team or chain of writers. The same data on screenwriting credits can reveal other aspects of what it’s […]
Over the next few weeks, I am aiming to answer a number of readers’ questions around screenwriting. To do so, I have built a dataset of all live-action feature film movie credits over the past seventy years, covering over 280,000 movies and 145,000 people. We’re going to start with a straightforward question and in the […]
If you ask the average movie-goer what they don’t like about Hollywood movies, they are likely to mention the seemingly endless production of sequels, prequels and spin-offs. Last week, a filmmaker asked me how common these were among independent movies. I didn’t know offhand, so I decided to find out. I used my database of […]
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 […]
Screenwriting was one of the first sectors of the film industry to embrace digital technology. Way back in the early 1990s, software packages were being launched which empowered screenwriters to craft their work safe in the knowledge that they could maintain multiple versions, back up important scripts and meet the industry’s tough formatting guidelines. Cut […]
Last week, I published my analysis of 12,309 feature film screenplays and the scores they each received from professional script readers. A byproduct of that research was that I had a large number of data points on a whole bunch of screenplays. This allowed me to look at what the average screenplay contains. Hopefully, this […]
Script readers are powerful gatekeepers. They read and rate scripts on behalf of producers, studios and competitions, meaning that what they think of a script is critical. Scoring well with readers could lead to your screenplay reaching the desks of the great and the good (who are hopefully also the rich and the powerful). Scoring […]
Today’s article is in response to a question from Jack Malvern at The Times. He got in touch to ask if fewer romantic comedies were being made. There has been press speculation that the “rom-com” genre is moving away from the big screen and onto subscription VOD platforms such as Netflix. So I agreed to take a look. […]
When I’m thinking about what movies I enjoy, I rarely consider whether they have a positive message or contain positive role models. But on a subconscious level, I’m sure these factors play a part in how much satisfaction I get from the flick. For example, I enjoyed The Wolf of Wall Street but felt it was […]
