Last Friday I ran another event with Jason Blum and the Blumhouse team, this time in New York. We were looking at how the horror is changing, and how we have to evolve the way we think about horror.

When I was making short films twenty years ago, it seemed really important to carefully curate which film festivals you gave your premiere status to (i.e. the first time your film is screened to the ...

When I published my first piece on standing ovations at film festivals a few weeks ago, I expected it to be a niche topic. Tricia Tuttle, the director of the Berlinale, had asked whether applause ...

A few years ago, David Wilkinson got in touch to ask for advice on his crowdfunding campaign. One of the topics he wanted to chat about was the ‘cost’ of offering a “Thanks” credit to his backers.

Last week, I investigated whether there was a link between the number of people thanked in a movie’s credits and the movie’s quality. That prompted a number of people to ask how the number of ...

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 ...

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.

I’ve written about the data behind Hallmark movies a few times before. So it was great fun to sit down with Pulitzer prize-winning data journalist (and good friend) Walt Hickey of NumLock to talk all ...

I studied the data behind 2,271 movies to reveal why Hollywood's big budget fare is often so poor. It's not random but the ...