The first time someone said “You should do a Substack” to me, I thought they were suggesting lunch. As more people started to ...

I have been asked a number of times over the years to study actors and the acting profession. The interested parties tend to ...

A few months ago I noted a steep drop in UK feature film production (mostly in the lowest budget range). Since then, the topic of feature film production has come up often in conversations I have with ...

In November I am leading (along with James Cotton) a four-month part-time programme around micro-budget films. I want to ensure we’re teaching what is actually happening in the industry today, rather ...

The profitability of independent films is a complicated topic for a whole variety of reasons. I can’t think of any other industry which requires so much money to be spent while offering so little ...

In the past, I have explored various facets of swearing in films, such as which country produces the most expletive-laden movies, the prevalence of swear words in different genres and how swearing can ...

A common belief among sales and distribution professionals is that “names sell”. As in, films starring famous actors (“names”) are more marketable than films without any famous names. But how true is ...

It: Chapter Two is an unusual horror film because it’s almost three hours long. This means it is longer than 99.78% of all horror films made over the past twenty years. Earlier in the year Avengers: ...

Attending a film festival is an exciting experience. It can also be expensive, surprising, inspiring, trying, exhausting, exhilarating, unpredictable, frustrating, eye-opening, chaotic, rewarding, ...

The first on Stuart’s list – little to no early reviews – has already been covered well by Walt Hickey over at FiveThirtyEight. In the article When Should You Buy Into A Movie’s Hype? he looked at the ...

Almost exactly two years ago I wrote an article entitled “How many UK films get a cinema release?” which was a response to a reader’s question. In the piece, I referenced data published by the BFI ...

In the second of four articles we wrote for the American Film Market, Bruce Nash and I looked at the relative popularity of genres around the world. We studied the territorial breakdown of theatrical ...