iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 10/11/2025

The most basic film statistic of how much a movie cost is disappearing, as budgets are now missing for over 95% of recent releases.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 06/11/2025

There are nine producers on the average movie. Nine! But does all that producing power make the film any better?

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 27/10/2025

A while back, David Nicholas Wilkinson asked me whether offering “With Thanks” credits to crowdfunding backers could make a film look bad. To find out, I analysed 8,096 movies to see what the data said.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 24/10/2025

Standing ovations are everywhere at festivals, but do they mean anything? I analysed the data, spoke with critics, and discussed it with @mattbelloni.bsky.social (@puck.news founding partner) on his awesome podcast, The Town.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 20/10/2025

Do most film festivals require premiere status? A question from MarBelle, the Editor-in-Chief of @directorsnotes.bsky.social, made me curious to find out. I studied the rules of 10,549 film festivals to see how many still insist on a premiere and how many don’t.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 15/10/2025

Cinema leaders have long argued that pricing doesn’t matter, yet almost all public polls say otherwise. I looked at what the data tells us, and talked with Vue International's Tim Richards, who has reversed his position after realising that pricing wasn’t a side issue, but the heart of the problem.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 13/10/2025

Last Friday I joined Jason Blum and the @blumhouse.com team in New York for an event all about how we see and discuss horror, and why our thinking needs to evolve. To prepare for the event, I took a look how what's changing in the horror genre, and what might be yet to come.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 06/10/2025

I looked at the financial performance of over 10,000 movies and millions of audience responses to find out which creative decisions tend to correlate with profitability. Across genres, some creative signals show up again and again in films that succeed financially.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 01/10/2025

I looked at 529 reported standing ovations across Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Toronto and Sundance to see if they predict anything meaningful.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 29/09/2025

When Trump first floated tariffs in May, I crunched the data. Now that he's renewed the threat, it’s worth looking at how many Hollywood movies are made outside America - and how any system of US tariffs might work.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 27/09/2025

Today I had the privilege of sharing new research at the Zurich Film Summit part of the Zurich Film Festival: Is “Go Woke, Go Broke” true for movies? The answer, based on 10,524 films and over 4 million audience reviews, is more complex than the slogan suggests.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 22/09/2025

Not all festivals charge a submission fee but most do. And are priced at more than $100 per submission. I looked at the cost of entering 4,631 festivals to find the average.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 19/09/2025

How long is too long for a festival film? When I interviewed 500+ film festival directors a few years back, the most consistent feedback was blunt: "Please, please, please make your films shorter."

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 17/09/2025

YouGov turned my recent research on moral lessons in movies into a poll of US adults to see how those values land in real life. Some things that stood out to me... (Thread) @yougov.co.uk @today.yougov.com

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 10/09/2025

How much control do a few major agencies really have over Hollywood’s directors? I tracked 1,000 top directors and linked each one to their current rep. The results are… lopsided.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 08/09/2025

Half of the directors behind the top 1,250 grossing films of the past 25 years went to film school and half did not. I looked at what happened next. Do film school graduates make better films? Are their films more profitable? Which schools have the most successful alumni?

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 03/09/2025

I’ve just finished analysing the backgrounds of 682 directors behind 1,250 top-grossing films since 2000. What percentage do you think went to film school?

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 01/09/2025

I researched who represents the 2,000 most famous actors to see where the power lies. Four companies represent more than half of top actors: Creative Artists Agency, United Talent Agency, The Gersh Agency, and William Morris Endeavor... (1/2)

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 29/08/2025

6. The history of enforcement shows short-lived gains after legal pressure, followed by stagnation once scrutiny ended. Stronger legal remedies, including leveraging “disparate impact” arguments under Title VII, are proposed as vehicles for change.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 29/08/2025

5. Self-regulation has been ineffective. Shadowing and mentoring programmes for women are often viewed as unpaid hoops that rarely lead to jobs.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 29/08/2025

4. Both industries are dominated by small, reputation-driven networks, highly subjective assessments, and a focus on risk minimisation. This environment may foster implicit bias and a cycle where women’s projects are persistently underestimated.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 29/08/2025

3. Industry ‘pipeline’ claims do not match reality. Women’s success in domains like Sundance rarely translates into studio opportunities, suggesting hiring barriers post-entry.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 29/08/2025

2. When women do direct, more women are employed in other key creative roles and more female characters appear on screen. Men dominate these roles when all-male directors are hired, limiting women’s visibility both in production and representation.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 29/08/2025

1. At the time, just 9% of top films were directed by a woman, despite women making up a third of film school graduates and winning a significant share of indie film awards. Similarly, only 6% of VC partners were women, and fewer than 3% of CEOs receiving VC funding were women.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 29/08/2025

Why do so few women become directors in Hollywood or partners in Silicon Valley? (Thread)

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 28/08/2025

I wanted to do a data-led test into whether film and movie are interchangeable. The data shows they signal very different things about genre, quality and intent.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 26/08/2025

What counts as ‘great’ cinema in 2025? The Godfather Part II was once ranked 11th in British Film Institute (BFI)'s Sight and Sound's 'The Greatest Films of All Time' project, but in the latest poll didn’t even make the top 100.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 20/08/2025

What's the most common colour on movie posters? I analysed 58,687 movie posters from the past century to see which colours dominate, how their use has shifted over time and what each hue signals to audiences.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 19/08/2025

7. The findings suggest that large-scale social movements can shift public opinions around diversity, especially in genres and franchises that previously excluded global majority talent.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 19/08/2025

6. Directors’ credentials mattered too. When high-profile directors led diverse casting decisions, post-BLM audiences responded more positively.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 19/08/2025

5. High-credential actors of the global majority received the biggest post-BLM boost. Negative bias faded almost entirely for established performers, while little changed for lower-credential actors.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 19/08/2025

4. For series with already inclusive main casts, ratings were less affected by cast changes, both before and after BLM.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 19/08/2025

3. The change was most visible in series that began as white-dominant. Historically mainstream franchises showed the strongest reduction in bias post-BLM.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 19/08/2025

2. After BLM, this negative impact on evaluations disappeared. Audience ratings became neutral to cast changes, suggesting a shift in public sentiment.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 19/08/2025

1. Before BLM, adding more actors from the global majority to the main cast resulted in lower audience and critic ratings.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 19/08/2025

I just read a study which used data on 434 movies within 173 series released between 1998 and 2021, focusing on the effect of casting more actors of the global majority in leading roles before and after the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement. Here's what they found. (Thread)

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 18/08/2025

Part of the reason we enjoy movies is that we get to see ideas and situations played out to people who are not us. We can then learn from what they did, what they didn't do, and how it worked out for them. (Ted Hope talks about movies being "design for living", which sums it up perfectly).

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 15/08/2025

I love the new Naked Gun (although it should have been called Son of A Gun). It made me think of the research Bruce Nash and I conducted for the American Film Market a few years ago. stephenfollows.com/p/patterns-among-successful-comedy-movies

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 15/08/2025

It's out! The new @guinnessworldrecords.com book has been released and is packed with all manner of weird and wonderful records about movies* *(They tell me they cover other topics across its 250+ pages but I can say without any bias that the movie records are the best records of all the records).

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 13/08/2025

Its so frustrating when names and faces on posters don't match up. And it seems to be everywhere - but how common is it really? I studied 4,000+ posters to find out.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 12/08/2025

5. Models struggled most to distinguish box office flops from modestly performing titles. Prediction accuracy was highest in the mid-range.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 12/08/2025

4. Advanced algorithms (such as Random Forest and Gradient Boosting) predicted box office returns best. With six years of training data, models explained up to 79% of variance in revenue, but prediction errors were much larger on flops and very low-performing titles.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 12/08/2025

3. Using only pre-release variables limited accuracy. Incorporating post-release data like social media activity or critical reviews would improve real-world performance.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 12/08/2025

2. Star power and distributor experience mattered, but their effect was smaller than budget.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 12/08/2025

1. The budget was by far the strongest predictor of box office returns, surpassing star power, distributor reputation, genre, and release window. This makes sense as bigger films have bigger backing and more money to recoup. Also, studios use this as a barrier to entry against competition.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 12/08/2025

This study looked at box office performance of 15,000 US films, with variables like budget, star power, distributor, genre, and release timing, and looked to find links to first-week box office takings and pinpoint factors linked to Oscar wins. Here's what they found ↓

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 11/08/2025

The data from over 10,000 films across fifty years shows that some sub-genres actually perform best with lower budgets. Spending more can weaken the qualities audiences value most in these genres.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 06/08/2025

What even IS a superhero movie? Is 'Wicked' a superhero movie? What about 'Mortal Kombat' or 'Avatar'?

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 04/08/2025

"Bad" movies can still make a lot of money. I looked at the detailed financials of almost 5,000 movies to find the ones which made at least 200% Producers Net Profit AND got a Metascore of under 50 out of 100.

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Stephen Follows @stephenfollows.com · 30/07/2025

Netflix has filed hundreds of trademarks, and they are quite revealing. Why does Netflix need a trademark for “Strong Black Lead”? What’s the long game behind “Netflix Bites”? And why didn’t they lock down “Netflix and Chill”?

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