Beginner’s Luck?
By: Team Slated
Tags: Screenwriting, Filmmaking, Infographics, Directors, Finance

Recall that Solid directors were those with Batting Averages above 15% but below 51%. Solid directors made up 17% of all the non-First-timers studied.

Looking at the Rotten Tomatoes scores of these directors’ next films, 43% of the 539 Solid directors went on to make a Fresh film.

So, if your director’s Batting Average is below 51%, your odds of making another Fresh movie are also below 51%. That stands to reason.

While this group of directors has won 87% fewer Oscars than the Genius cohort, they’re responsible for many franchise-starting titles that have earned studios profits for decades. Movies like DIE HARD, PREDATOR (1987), LEGALLY BLONDE, CHARLIE’S ANGELS (2000), DUMB AND DUMBER, AMERICAN PIE, TWILIGHT, and HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE came from directors in this cohort. Collectively, these seven directors have grossed over $9.1 billion at the box office. It should be noted that almost all of these titles drew positive responses from critics as well. So the data suggests that, if you’re going for a wide-release tentpole movie, a Solid director with a great deal of experience can make for an incredibly lucrative bet.

Next, on to Subpar directors. Recall that Subpar directors are those whose Batting Average is below 15%. Subpar directors made up 25.5% of the non-First-timers studied. Out of those 798 directors, thirty-six percent went on to make a Fresh film after their averages were calculated.

Attaching a director in this group means you’ll have slightly more than a one in three chance of making a good movie.

On average, Subpar directors had only 1.75 credits prior to their most recent film. This seems to imply that, if you’ve directed two movies and both were critical flops, you’re not likely to be given many more swings at bat. That’s compared with Genius directors who had 2.95 past credits on average, and Solid directors who had 4.5. Aside from that observation, there weren’t any earth-shattering takeaways in this subset.

The Genius cohort, however, revealed some unforeseen takeaways for investors and producers alike.

FINDINGS PART 2 — GENIUS-LEVEL DIRECTORS

Recall that a Genius-level director is anyone whose ratio of Fresh to Rotten directing credits is 51% or higher. Of the nearly 10,000 directors studied, Genius-level directors made up 57% of all experienced directors. First of all, that’s surprising; apparently, there are a ton of incredible directors out there.

In addition to the directors named above, Genius-level directors include Steven Spielberg, Greta Gerwig, Martin Scorsese, Kathryn Bigelow, Alfonso Cuaron, David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, Richard Linklater, Alejandro Inaritu, Alexander Payne, Ava DuVernay, Benny and Josh Safdie, Cathy Yan, Gus Van Sant, Chan-wook Park, David Fincher, Ang Lee, Guillermo Del Toro, Noah Baumbach, Bong Joon-Ho, Karyn Kusama, Taika Waititi, Patty Jenkins, Darren Aronofsky, and Jordan Peele.

On one end of the experience spectrum, iconic directors like Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg each have more than thirty feature directing credits under their belts, and maintain staggeringly high Batting Averages of 97% and 88% respectively. Similarly, Kathryn Bigelow has directed eight feature films that were captured in the study prior to DETROIT, eight of which were Fresh, for a 100% Batting Average.

By comparison, hot young directors like Jordan Peele and Cathy Yan had just one Fresh credit under their belts before their latest critical victories (US and BIRDS OF PREY).

In this group of directors, too, past performance proved reliably predictive of future performance.

Sixty-eight percent of the Genius-level directors went on to make another Fresh film.

That suggests that if you attach a director with a 51% or higher Batting Average to your movie, you have more than a two in three chance of ending up with another critically well reviewed film. In other words, Genius-level directors are exceptionally good bets. While remarkable, this isn’t terribly surprising.

What is surprising, however, is how many of the 1,786 Genius-level directors you may never have heard of despite their outstanding performance. Though we won’t publish a list of names in this article, there are hundreds of directors who’ve made several released feature films — the majority of which were critical successes — but who seem to be getting overlooked by the film industry at large for one reason for another.

This would seem to be the quintessential example of a “Moneyball” opportunity in the entertainment business. Rather than attaching a very experienced director with a mixed track record, these hidden geniuses won’t blow up your budget, and if you package up around them and make sure they have a winning script, you stand to reap the rewards of their undervalued talent.

Being an analytics-driven marketplace, Slated is in a unique position to spotlight talented directors who may not be getting a fair shake despite exceptional track records. Expect to see this data continue to inform our Financial Analysis product, including our Certified Fresh estimator, which we make available to all 50,000+ filmmakers, investors and all other members on our platform.

FINDINGS PART 3 — FIRST-TIME DIRECTORS

Still with us? Good. Because the First-timer cohort is where the most unexpected and exciting findings emerged.

First-timers comprised a whopping 68% of the 9,807 directors who’ve made at least one feature film in the past fifty years — that’s 6,684 directors.

This fact alone seems almost paradoxical. In the film industry, one of the most common complaints is how impossible it can be for a director to get their first film made, yet most released films are directed by First-timers.

So, does that mean that most First-timers never get a second shot? The short answer is ‘yes.’ The cohort size alone suggests that two thirds of the directors in our study have yet to make a second feature film, and over 2,000 of them released their first film more than ten years ago.

A closer look at their individual credits reveals one possible explanation: most of these directors’ first outings did not get a wide release.

Using the number of critical reviews per film as a proxy for how widely their films were released, the average number of reviews per film for First-timers is just 33, compared to an average of 78 critical reviews for both Genius and Solid directors, and 48 reviews on average for Subpar directors. It’s very possible that limited release patterns have spoiled these First-timers’ chances of being widely known, and therefore of getting a second film made.

In a brutally competitive industry, the data confirms that first-time directors don’t get a fair shake. But do they deserve this treatment? How did they perform?

Of the 6,684 first-time directors studied, 62% of their first films were Fresh.

That’s right. Despite conventional wisdom, First-timers perform almost as well as Genius-level directors (Batting Average of 62% vs. 68%).

In other words, the cohort with the least amount of experience — precisely zero feature film experience to be exact — performs almost as well as the most talented directors in the world, and better than hundreds of other directors who’ve made dozens of films.

At this point, you might be looking for some aberrant pattern in the data. If two thirds of the First-timer’s films were Fresh, surely, those movies must all be barely-Fresh, right?

Not really. The “average Freshness” of the First-timers’ movies was 65%. That’s significantly higher than the average Freshness of both Solid directors’ films (52%) and Subpar directors’ movies (48%). And it’s just three points below the average freshness for Genius-level directors (68%).

Let that sink it for a moment: First-timers perform almost as well as Genius-level directors both in terms of their Batting Average and average Freshness.

How could this fact have gone overlooked for so long? And if it’s true, then why aren’t all the financiers and top talent insisting that their next films be directed by First-timers? Before you go buying your nephew a 6K camera and dumping your life savings into his first film, here is one critically important factor to consider:

To have even made it into this study, these directors must have directed one film. In other words, we aren’t measuring all of the “First-timers” that never ended up making a feature.

Making your first movie is impossibly hard. And clearing that hurdle is itself a qualifier. Many of the directors in our First-timer cohort were people who fought for years to establish enough credibility to get their first film made. Financiers rarely greenlight first-time directors unless they’ve done something extraordinary to prove themselves first.

Notable feature directorial debuts of the last couple years have included Olivia Wilde’s BOOKSMART, Jeff Fowler’s SONIC THE HEDGEHOG, Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz’s THE PEANUT BUTTER FALCON, Melina Matsoukas’s QUEEN & SLIM, and Joe Talbot’s THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO. Each of these filmmakers had established their creative prowess in other ways before they were backed by producers who believed in their ability to cross over into directing features.

Looking ahead to the Sundance 2021 lineup: Jerrod Carmichael, Robin Wright and Questlove may be making their debuts as feature directors, but they’re no strangers to creating exceptional, critically acclaimed content.

In a 2016 collaboration between Wired magazine and Slated that looked at a group of directors’ paths to their first studio film, 11.3% had achieved success in television first, 11.3% had made a name for themselves in animation, 10.9% were working screenwriters, 6.6% had experience in commercials, 5.3% had made noteworthy shorts, and 3.6% of the directors were successful actors prior to getting their first studio directing job.

So while first-time directors are certainly an undervalued segment of the creative community, picking the right First-timer still requires intuition and taste. Not all “first-time” directors are created equal. Someone with a Cannes-winning short film and 10 commercials under her belt is far better prepared than a film student with a DSLR and a dream.

The above notwithstanding, if you’re a producer or investor who prides yourself in spotting talent in someone’s work, do not fear the first-time director. Paired with the right team, this category of filmmaker can pay off big — bigger, in fact, than many more experienced directors.

And that’s before taking screenplays into account. Last, let’s look at how script quality played a role in each of the cohorts.

FINDINGS PART 4 — BATTING AVERAGES AND SCRIPT QUALITY

Luckily, we already have a proven indicator of script quality, which we were able to cross reference with the director dataset.

For those who may be unfamiliar with the Script Score, it’s Slated’s “double blind” assessment of a screenplay that uses a simple formula to crunch ratings from three professional readers into a 100-point score.

Slated Analytics has delivered over 10,000 Script Scores to filmmakers over the years, hundreds of which have been turned into movies. This metric has proven highly predictive of both critical and commercial success and serves as one of the most consequential signals for project matching in the Slated marketplace.

Most professional screenplays score in the 70s, with the likelihood of critical acclaim increasing the closer you get to Script Scores in the 80s. So, for the purposes of this study, we’ll consider screenplays with a Script Score of 70 or higher to be “Good Scripts,” those with 75 and higher to be “Great Scripts,” and those with sub-70 Script Scores to be “Weak Scripts.”