I tracked every turn in the stories of 7,225 films to see how many follow the shape the screenwriting books teach.

In Die Hard, Holly Gennaro asks Hans Gruber, “What’s going on?”, only to receive the less-than-clear response, “The child is about to touch the stove.” Poetic thieves aside, Reese Witherspoon has a ...

This isn’t a new data study. It’s something I’ve been working on for the past few months, and I’m very proud of it. I’ve made a book with the artist Miriam Elia. It’s called We make a movie, it comes ...

Earlier this week, the national board of SAG-AFTRA (the actors’ union) voted to keep Duncan Crabtree-Ireland in charge until June 2032 and to add ‘CEO’ to his title. The announcement didn’t mention ...

De Luca and Abdy, we hear, ran Digger through their analytical comps system. The combo of Cruise and Iñárritu justified a $125M production greenligiht. Three weeks before Digger opened, De Luca told ...

One of the biggest forces in the film industry (beyond familial nepotism) is your professional network. The more people you have backing you and your projects, the better your outcomes are likely to ...

The question I get asked most is how to raise the money needed to make a film. My stock answer usually starts with asking if they are looking for funding or financing. Funding is money given because ...

Last week, I got sent a tweet accusing DiscussingFilm of never posting the Rotten Tomatoes score for a new Universal film, or a single negative review, implying Universal had paid them off. It's not ...

A few weeks ago I went to a screening of American Graffiti at the ActOne Cinema in Acton, followed by a Q&A in which Mark Kermode chatted with Walter Murch. Murch built the sound for American Graffiti ...