Website / IMDb

The Internet Movie Database is a website founded in 1990. Initially fan-operated, in 1998, it was bought by Amazon for $55 million.

The website records every movie ever released, along with television series and episodes, video games, actors, voice actors, major characters, and so on and so forth. Every movie had its own little forum for heated and aggressive exchanges to take place. And like any other site, you will sometimes find Trolls and Sockpuppets (for absolute troll-magnets, look no further than the "Politics" and "Soapbox" subforums). The G.I.F.T became so prevalent in the boards that Amazon decided to shut them down in 2017, but they appear to have been successfully archived.

Users can give 1-10 grades to movies. After the death of Heath Ledger, many users pre-emptively gave The Dark Knight a perfect 10 rating, while at the same time giving perennial high rankers such as The Godfather a rating of 1. Prior to the release of The Twilight Saga: New Moon the more avid of the Twilight fans gave mass ratings of 10 to the film before it even came to theaters, luckily /b/ was there to even it out with a healthy dose of 1s without even seeing it. IMDb's averaging algorithm is designed to compensate for this kind of behaviour to an extent. (This doesn't prevent some gaming of the system - took a while, but the site seems to have seen that case and caught on)

TV Tropes has something similar to IMDb with our very own Franchise Actors.

As of May 2021, the ten highest rated films (scale of 1 - 10) are:

1. 9.2 - The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
2. 9.1 - The Godfather (1972)
3. 9.0 - The Godfather Part II (1974)
4. 9.0 - The Dark Knight (2008)
5. 8.9 - 12 Angry Men (1957)
6. 8.9 - Schindler's List (1993)
7. 8.9 - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
8. 8.8 - Pulp Fiction (1994)
9. 8.8 - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
10. 8.8 - The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

As of May 2021, the 10 lowest rated films (the Bottom 100 list usually has a lot of movies featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000) are:

1. 2.0 - Disaster Movie (2008)
2. 2.0 - Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (2004)
3. 2.1 - Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)
4. 2.1 - Codename: K.O.Z. (2015)
5. 2.2 - Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010)
6. 2.2 - Saving Christmas (2015)
7. 2.2 - The Hottie and the Nottie (2008)
8. 2.3 - House of the Dead (2003)
9. 2.3 - Pledge This! (2006)^note This and The Hottie and the Nottie trade places as to which is Paris Hilton's worst-rated film.
10. 2.4 - Son of the Mask (2005)

In January 2019, Amazon launched the IMDb-branded ad-supported streaming service IMDb TV, which is available both on the IMDb website and on the Prime Video platform. The free service contains a selection of movies and television (it notably acquired Mad Men after the show's long residence on Netflix concluded) and has also begun distributing originals, beginning with the US release of Alex Rider in 2020. The service also secured the second pay-TV window for Universal's 2020-2021 film slate, following their expiration from HBO and Cinemax, the first time a free ad-based web platform has acquired a major television package of this kind.

As of 2022, the service became known as Amazon Freevee.

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Freevee original programming includes:

• Alex Rider (2020-present) ^note Moved from Prime Video from season 2 onward, though Prime still distributes the series in places where Freevee is unavailable.
• Almost Paradise (2023) ^note Season 2; moved from WGN America
• Bosch: Legacy (2022-present)
• Corner Gas Animated (2019-2021; US distribution)
• Judy Justice (2021-present)
• Jury Duty (2023)
• Leverage: Redemption (2021)
• Sprung (2022)

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