Let’s start with the headline figure. The median Oscar voter is 64 years old, with two-thirds being between 50 and 79 years ...

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 $39.1m and then dropping 74% in its second ...

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.

My latest Film Data Scientist video, this time investigating why so many film posters seem to have forgotten the names of their lead actors. I’ll be uploading new video essays every couple of weeks ...

Marketing is a key part of any film’s success, but training and case studies are much more likely to focus on the filmmaking than on film promotion. So I went looking for real-world examples of indie ...

Last month, I wrote about the career paths top directors took to direct a major motion picture. One finding was that women were less likely than men to make a second film on the same scale. A few of ...

Let’s start with the seemingly incongruous situation. Hollywood as an industry has been honing its craft for well over a century. Given the power, prestige, and money on offer, it attracts some of the ...

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. The chart below ...

Barton Weiss from VideoFest got in touch to ask: Do you know the percentage of a film festival’s budget that comes from entry fees? I have heard that it was 9% - what have you heard? Thirteen years ...