Does Thanking Too Many People in the Credits Indicate a Movie is Bad?

Film data researcher Stepehen on his blog: David Wilkinson got in touch yesterday asking for advice on his new crowdfunding campaign. One of the topics he wanted to chat about was the 'cost' of offering a 'Thanks' credit to his backers. This involves awarding someone who backs the film a credit on the movie under the 'With Thanks' section. This name check would appear at the end of the movie and, crucially, on IMDb. On the face of it, there is no cost to offering an almost infinite number of these as it would just be a case of a longer end credit crawl and IMDb doesn't charge for listing credits.

However, David brought up an anecdote from his time as a distributor. In conversations with fellow film sales professionals, the topic of 'how to spot a bad movie' came up. One participant said that they regard having too many 'With Thanks' credits as a red flag. The others agreed and added that the number of producers listed on a movie was similarly useful in spotting a bad film. These are just the kind of industry beliefs that I love to test. This week I'm going to tackle the 'With Thanks' credits and then next week I'll turn to producing credits. I gathered data on 8,096 movies released in US cinemas between 2000-19 (i.e. pre-pandemic), taking note of their number of credited/thanked individuals, their IMDb score (to stand in for audience views) and Metascore (to sample the views of critics). Conclusion: 'A simple and pleasing result. The industry belief that having more than the average number of people thanked in the credits means the movie is bad is flat-out wrong.'

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