The most basic film statistic of how much a movie cost is disappearing, as budgets are now missing for over 95% of recent releases.

There are nine producers on the average movie. Nine! But does all that producing power make the film any better?

A while back, David Nicholas Wilkinson asked me whether offering “With Thanks” credits to crowdfunding backers could make a film look bad. To find out, I analysed 8,096 movies to see what the data said.

Standing ovations are everywhere at festivals, but do they mean anything? I analysed the data, spoke with critics, and discussed it with @mattbelloni.bsky.social (@puck.news founding partner) on his awesome podcast, The Town.

New pod: Finally, some REAL DATA behind the insane rise in media coverage of film fest standing ovations. And does the applause eventually translate into dollars?? With researcher @stephenfollows.com. Listen! open.spotify.com/episode/1lKe...

Do most film festivals require premiere status? A question from MarBelle, the Editor-in-Chief of @directorsnotes.bsky.social, made me curious to find out. I studied the rules of 10,549 film festivals to see how many still insist on a premiere and how many don’t.

Cinema leaders have long argued that pricing doesn’t matter, yet almost all public polls say otherwise. I looked at what the data tells us, and talked with Vue International's Tim Richards, who has reversed his position after realising that pricing wasn’t a side issue, but the heart of the problem.

Last Friday I joined Jason Blum and the @blumhouse.com team in New York for an event all about how we see and discuss horror, and why our thinking needs to evolve. To prepare for the event, I took a look how what's changing in the horror genre, and what might be yet to come.

I looked at the financial performance of over 10,000 movies and millions of audience responses to find out which creative decisions tend to correlate with profitability. Across genres, some creative signals show up again and again in films that succeed financially.

I looked at 529 reported standing ovations across Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Toronto and Sundance to see if they predict anything meaningful.

When Trump first floated tariffs in May, I crunched the data. Now that he's renewed the threat, it’s worth looking at how many Hollywood movies are made outside America - and how any system of US tariffs might work.

Today I had the privilege of sharing new research at the Zurich Film Summit part of the Zurich Film Festival: Is “Go Woke, Go Broke” true for movies? The answer, based on 10,524 films and over 4 million audience reviews, is more complex than the slogan suggests.

Not all festivals charge a submission fee but most do. And are priced at more than $100 per submission. I looked at the cost of entering 4,631 festivals to find the average.

How long is too long for a festival film? When I interviewed 500+ film festival directors a few years back, the most consistent feedback was blunt: "Please, please, please make your films shorter."

YouGov turned my recent research on moral lessons in movies into a poll of US adults to see how those values land in real life. Some things that stood out to me... (Thread) @yougov.co.uk @today.yougov.com

How much control do a few major agencies really have over Hollywood’s directors? I tracked 1,000 top directors and linked each one to their current rep. The results are… lopsided.

Half of the directors behind the top 1,250 grossing films of the past 25 years went to film school and half did not. I looked at what happened next. Do film school graduates make better films? Are their films more profitable? Which schools have the most successful alumni?

I’ve just finished analysing the backgrounds of 682 directors behind 1,250 top-grossing films since 2000. What percentage do you think went to film school?

I researched who represents the 2,000 most famous actors to see where the power lies. Four companies represent more than half of top actors: Creative Artists Agency, United Talent Agency, The Gersh Agency, and William Morris Endeavor... (1/2)

Why do so few women become directors in Hollywood or partners in Silicon Valley? (Thread)

I wanted to do a data-led test into whether film and movie are interchangeable. The data shows they signal very different things about genre, quality and intent.

Happy 70 Year Anniversary to @guinnessworldrecords.com! I'm celebrating by having a dig around the archives to look for some movie facts around the number 7️⃣0️⃣. (Thread)

What counts as ‘great’ cinema in 2025? The Godfather Part II was once ranked 11th in British Film Institute (BFI)'s Sight and Sound's 'The Greatest Films of All Time' project, but in the latest poll didn’t even make the top 100.

What's the most common colour on movie posters? I analysed 58,687 movie posters from the past century to see which colours dominate, how their use has shifted over time and what each hue signals to audiences.

I just read a study which used data on 434 movies within 173 series released between 1998 and 2021, focusing on the effect of casting more actors of the global majority in leading roles before and after the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement. Here's what they found. (Thread)

Part of the reason we enjoy movies is that we get to see ideas and situations played out to people who are not us. We can then learn from what they did, what they didn't do, and how it worked out for them. (Ted Hope talks about movies being "design for living", which sums it up perfectly).

I love the new Naked Gun (although it should have been called Son of A Gun). It made me think of the research Bruce Nash and I conducted for the American Film Market a few years ago. stephenfollows.com/p/patterns-among-successful-comedy-movies

It's out! The new @guinnessworldrecords.com book has been released and is packed with all manner of weird and wonderful records about movies* *(They tell me they cover other topics across its 250+ pages but I can say without any bias that the movie records are the best records of all the records).

Its so frustrating when names and faces on posters don't match up. And it seems to be everywhere - but how common is it really? I studied 4,000+ posters to find out.

There are loads of academic papers which do some form of prediction around movie economics. I've picked out a few I think are worth the read. First up, this one from 2020. (Thread)

The data from over 10,000 films across fifty years shows that some sub-genres actually perform best with lower budgets. Spending more can weaken the qualities audiences value most in these genres.

What even IS a superhero movie? Is 'Wicked' a superhero movie? What about 'Mortal Kombat' or 'Avatar'?

"Bad" movies can still make a lot of money. I looked at the detailed financials of almost 5,000 movies to find the ones which made at least 200% Producers Net Profit AND got a Metascore of under 50 out of 100.

Netflix has filed hundreds of trademarks, and they are quite revealing. Why does Netflix need a trademark for “Strong Black Lead”? What’s the long game behind “Netflix Bites”? And why didn’t they lock down “Netflix and Chill”?

Here's a great study by Thomas J. Billard from 2019 which tested how viewing habits affect prejudice. (Thread)

Avatar 5 was announced in Dec 2009 - over 8,000 days before current expected release date. I analysed 11,560 other movie release date announcements to see how typical that is.

Filmmakers dream of their film becoming a classic, a cult favourite, or part of the canon. No one dreams of it becoming a tax write-off. I took a look at why studios sometimes cancel completed films and why they’re forbidden from ever releasing them to the public.

This study proved what we already know (i.e. that sequels make money!) but it also revealed that the timing and length of the franchise matter more than we might think. They studied 167 films to measure what drives box office success in sequels. Here's what they found ↓

The busiest two days in the global film festival calendar aren’t when you might think. I gathered data on 50 major festivals, going back 25 years, to map the shape of the annual calendar. stephenfollows.com/p/what-is-the-busiest-day-for-film-festivals

The release of Eddington made me think back to this research I published a few years ago. It tracked the genre preferences of 117,000 fiction films produced in 151 countries over a 20 year period.

On a recent trip to the cinema I had to watch a run of really long trailers. This got me thinking - have movie trailers always been this long, or am I just becoming a grumpy old man?

Here's a fascinating study into patterns among successful movies. Researchers analysed 425 produced screenplays and matched them to box office results. They tracked characters, dialogue, pacing and emotional tone to see how well each script predicted commercial success. This is what they found...

Are movies with plot twists better than those without? I studied the plots of 26,710 movies to see what the data says.

This topic has come up twice in separate conversations this week so I think it's worth repeating. The vast majority of films do not have a long tail. Some do but most will earn the majority of their total lifetime income in the first few years of release.

Close-ups make us care... but only up to a point. This study tested how the number of close-ups affects how viewers describe a character’s inner life. Same film, different versions, each with a different number of face shots. Here's what they found... (Thread)

Here are the ten things cinemas want from the film industry... (Thread)

Movies with more positive messages are more likely to be profitable. Genres like sci-fi, adventure and comedy showed the strongest link between positivity and financial success. Drama, romance and fantasy were less consistent.

Germany makes wildly successful comedies and family films, but (unless you live in Germany) you’ve probably never seen them. Here's why German films look so different at home and abroad: stephenfollows.com/p/why-german-films-look-so-different-at-home-and-abroad

A strong network helps… but only if you're in the right role. This study analysed 2,110 films to see how a filmmaker’s professional network effects box office. It looked at over 15,000 people and mapped their collaboration ties across a decade of films. They found ↓

Most exhibitors agree that the next wave of cinema-goers is less loyal to tradition and more focused on the overall experience. But the industry is still figuring out how to adapt.