StephenFollows.com - Using data to explain the film industry

A few weeks ago I published the first half of my conversations with the people who read cold scripts for a living. I spoke to 38 agents, managers, assistants and junior execs on which credentials actually get a s...

Last week I gave a keynote at the Locarno Film Festival, following a request by the organisers to give the well-connected audience a ‘slap in the face’. This is exactly the kind of brief I relish, so I covered the hard realities of profitability, gatekeepers, and nepotism.

I’m working on a big project around the Oscars, and it's revealing just how sparse the research landscape is on Oscar voters.

For example, there is only one reliable source for the average age of Oscar voters. In 2012, the

A couple of years ago, Sony re-released a movie that had flopped only a few months earlier.

Morbius had died at the box office in April 2022, opening to $...

Every year, tens of thousands of screenwriters pay to enter contests. A major selling point for them is that winning (or placing highly) will mean that the right people will finally read your script.

Some competitions directly provide top scripts to influential industry people during or just after the competition runs. Beyond that, the implication is that having placed ...