Once you notice that the names at the top of a movie poster rarely match the faces beneath, you start to wonder why it ...

I collected 57 published accounts of filmmakers opening their books on marketing and release spend, from a $1,000 theatrical ...

I followed the careers of 1,765 directors of top grossing films to work out who gets another go after a first film that doesn ...

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 ...

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 ...

Every year the Black List crowns Hollywood's best unmade screenplays. I traced two decades of scripts and 1,682 writers to see if the list a brilliant talent-spotter, a genuine career-maker, or both.

“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 ...

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 ...