Top all-time · #1899
Stephen Follows
Personal blog · stephenfollows.comdataculturebusiness
Stephen Follows writes StephenFollows.com - Using data to explain the film industry, a personal blog at stephenfollows.com about data, culture and business. Since 2013, 41 different Hacker News readers have linked it 47 times, most often “What just happened to TheNumbers.com should worry us all”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-30, and you can follow it by feed.
I use data to understand how the film industry works and then share that to help filmmakers get their films funded, shot and seen. Click to read StephenFollows.com - Using data to explain the film industry, by Stephen Follows, a Substack publication.
Most-linked posts?
- What just happened to TheNumbers.com should worry us all3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-07-23
- /how-many-films-are-released-each-year/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-07-28
- /how-movies-make-money-hollywood-blockbusters/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-06-10
- What Netflix's patents reveal about the future of watching movies2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-05-01
- Full costs and income of a $1m independent feature film2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-07-19
What Hacker News says?
Have you checked that assertion? Because it didn’t ring true to me based on what I remember (which was that PG-13 tends to be the sweet spot), and it doesn’t match the data I can find, e.g.: https://stephenfollows.com/which-mpaa-rating-earns-the-most-... PG-13 is far and away the leader in terms of both highest-grossing films and percentage of box office revenue; R-rated films are actually the second in terms of hig…
Comment linking /which-mpaa-rating-earns-the-most-money/
on “Why “go nuts, show nuts” doesn’t work in 2022”Submitted Are film critics losing sync with audiences? as a story · 223 points
HN discussionLet me do a back of envelope calculation. This source [1] claims that the average production cost of a Hollywood movie has risen to $40 million. This is based on 5713 movies produced between 1999-2020, which is about 285 movies/year. Let's double that for fun and figure out what happens if you hit 500 million subscribers worldwide. 600 movies *40m/movie /500m subscribers = $48 /subscriber every year. So presumably,…
Comment linking /how-has-the-cost-of-making-a-movie-changed-over-the-past-twenty-years/
on “GitHub reinstates Popcorn Time code”Submitted Which colours dominate movie posters and why? as a story · 181 points
HN discussionHere's an older post (2015) by the same guy about Hollywood films: https://stephenfollows.com/how-original-are-hollywood-movies... > 39% of top movies released 2005-14 were truly original, i.e. not an adaptation, sequel, spin-off, remake, or other such derivative work. I don't know, I watch most of my movies at home (I have a nice setup) and watch as many old movies as new. I never feel like I have any trouble findi…
Comment linking /how-original-are-hollywood-movies/
on “When do we stop finding new music?”Submitted A data analysis of speeches at the Oscars as a story · 168 points
HN discussion> Look at Hollywood now too: everything is a sequel, prequel, remake, reboot, or adaptation. There’s hardly anything original anymore. Vs: > This may surprise some, but since 2000, just over half of all movies released have been original screenplays. https://stephenfollows.com/are-movies-becoming-more-derivati... The problem is they aren't blockbusters, so you don't remember them. From the same link: > While the num…
Comment linking /are-there-more-movie-sequels-than-there-used-to-be/
on “When do we stop finding new music?”Submitted Using data to determine if Die Hard is a Christmas movie as a story · 127 points
HN discussionHow much storage does Netflix actually need for its whole library? It's got about 17,000 titles globally [1]. If they have copies in SD, 720p, HD and 4k that would be 68,000 versions (plus some extra audio tracks for stuff dubbed in multiple languages, but I suspect this is fairly minimal in terms of storage though) Let's assume that the resolutions have the bitrates at 5, 10, 15 and 20 mbps. The average length of a…
Comment linking /netflix-original-movies-shows/
on “FreeBSD optimizations used by Netflix to serve video at 800Gb/s [pdf]”Submitted How many shots are in the average movie today? as a story · 45 points
HN discussionReference? I've never heard that before. Sounds highly unlikely. Would be fascinated to see evidence showing otherwise. What is true is that the studios take a higher percentage of ticket sales during opening week, possibly 55-65% or more in some cases. I believe it depends on the movie. The percentage starts to flatten out back below 50% in the following weeks. So it's true that the theater chains do want to optimi…
Comment linking /how-a-cinemas-box-office-income-is-distributed/
on “MoviePass Worked Out Great”Submitted What Netflix's patents reveal about the future of watching movies as a story · 11 points
HN discussionThey do make some money! > Here are the combined financial figures for all 29 Hollywood blockbusters (budgeted over $100m)… > Total combined budgets: $4.37 billion > Total combined costs (including budgets, marketing and all other costs): $11.52 billion > Total combined income (from all revenue streams): $11.95 billion > Profit across all movies: $428.9 million > An average profit of $14.8 million per movie The whol…
Comment linking /how-movies-make-money-hollywood-blockbusters/
on “Nintendo's big piracy case is a sad story”Submitted The full costs and income of a £1M indie film as a story · 7 points
HN discussionI was hoping someone would call me out on that https://stephenfollows.com/are-hollywood-movies-getting-long... https://filmandmovielists.wordpress.com/2014/09/11/are-movie... I track all the films I watch in a spreadsheet, half of them are in 1990-2010, which the last link shows films were becoming shorter for awhile
Comment linking /are-hollywood-movies-getting-longer
on “They want you to forget what a film looks like”Submitted Using data to determine if Die Hard is a Christmas movie as a story · 4 points
HN discussionhttps://stephenfollows.com/how-many-films-are-released-each-... The best I could come up with - 93 wide release movies in 2016. AMC does restrict the subscription service so it doesn’t cover the Fathom Events movies.
Comment linking /how-many-films-are-released-each-year/
on “MoviePass couldn’t afford to pay for movie tickets on Thursday”Submitted How AI tools are already changing the jobs of film professionals today as a story · 3 points
HN discussion"How many films are released each year?" https://stephenfollows.com/how-many-films-are-released-each-... The graph shows "Hollywood Wide Releases" at about 100/year for 1995 to 2016. The rate is almost constant. "All Other Releases" go from about 170/year in 1995 to 640/year in 2016. The increase is roughly linear, with a major dip during the great recession of 2008-9. Other graphs show that theater admissions are r…
Comment linking /how-many-films-are-released-each-year/
on “The Slow Death of Hollywood”Submitted Are movies becoming more derivative? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionNot GP, but looking at the relative difference graph[1] two hypotheses occur to me: 1) Most of the categories that are over-represented are ones that individuals watch out of obligation, rather than desire. A large portion of people watch documentaries (and biographies/historical films) because they feel they "should", because they feel like they should learn something. Same for drama - these often include Oscar-bai…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Difference-between-relative-Metascores-and-IMDb-user-scores-by-genre-2000-19-900x501.png
on “Are film critics losing sync with audiences?”Submitted Has Hollywood given up on the happy ending? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSurely but also photography, the title in the movie titles is often "director of photography" though an Oscar is named as "best cinematography": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinematographer https://stephenfollows.com/cinematographer-vs-director-of-ph...
Comment linking /cinematographer-vs-director-of-photography/
on “The Matrix looks dramatically different on Hulu versus on HBO Max”Submitted To what extent is AI being used in movies and TV today? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI was going to say this seems factually untrue, because the number of films released each year has been going up for a long time, but there are some interesting parallels on how films are distributed. Looking at https://stephenfollows.com/how-many-films-are-released-each-... , the number of films released has gone way up over time, but the number of films in wide-release has gone done. The internet has more content…
Comment linking /how-many-films-are-released-each-year/
on “The User Always Loses”Submitted What just happened to TheNumbers.com should worry us all as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI feel like me and the author of this piece have different opinions about where to put the line that separates orange from yellow. If you showed me many of the posters shown here in isolation, and asked me to describe the palette, I would have said "that's a yellow poster": https://stephenfollows.com/i/171004131/orange-the-mvp-of-the... - with some exceptions such as Lorax and Unbelievers that I would have said are…
Comment linking /i/171004131/orange-the-mvp-of-the-colour-spectrum
on “Which colours dominate movie posters and why?”Submitted How long does a film take to recoup? as a story · 2 points
HN discussion>The only thing that makes movies economical is theatrical releases. Ah no. Home releases have been for very long the single biggest profitable part of a movie's life cycle. That's why Netflix doesn't waste its time with theatrical unless it has to, ie when they employ Scorcese and he puts in his contract, I'm assuming. https://stephenfollows.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/how-mo... https://stephenfollows.com/how-mo…
Comment linking /how-movies-make-money-hollywood-blockbusters/
on “Disney, Warner, Comcast, and Paramount are contemplating cuts, possible mergers”Submitted Does thanking too many people in the credits indicate a movie is bad? as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
