StephenFollows.com - Using data to explain the film industry

My latest Film Data Scientist video, this time looking at the numbers behind the age of directors.

If you would like a slightly more… ahem… sensible reading of the data, you may want to check out my article from a few weeks ago, titled "

Here’s a conundrum for you - why aren’t Hollywood movies better?

Today, I’m going to go through the market forces which have led to the current state of mainstream cinema and show you the data behind it.

Let’s start with the seemingly incongruous situation.

Hollywood as an industry has been honing its craft for well over a century. Given the...

Since 2005, Franklin Leonard has run an annual survey of film industry insiders, asking for their favourite screenplays of the year that have not yet been made. The result, the Black List, has become one of t...

There are two different narratives I hear about AI in movies right now:

“We’re moments away from uploading a script and making movies!” (This is usually followed by the person trying to get me to look at a demo of their “ground-breaking” vibe-coded AI-to-storyboard start-up).

“It’s all hype and will burst any second, returning mov...

I have received a few questions from readers about the path to becoming a top movie director, prompted by a recent Substack post entitled “The Annenberg Ouroboros” by Hollywood Gadfly