IMDb‘s list of top 250 movies has undergone a suspicious change. For years, the Internet Movie Database has been the go-to destination for all information related to films and television series – such as cast listings, plot summaries, news, trivia, and fan ratings. Owned by Amazon, the site also launched an ad-supported streaming service in 2019 known as IMDb TV, allowing users to watch an array of movies and TV shows for free. IMDb TV has even ventured into producing its own content, with a reboot of Redemption acting as its first original series.

For years, the website has also captivated film buffs with its list of Top 250 movies, which is determined by user ratings. However, some have speculated there is a more secret formula at play. The list is home to some legendary titles such as The Godfather, The Shawshank Redemption, 12 Angry Men, and Schindler’s List. A few comic book blockbusters have also made their way into the top 10, including Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. More recently, Spider-Man: No Way Home landed at number 9, though it has since fallen down to 35.

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Now, IMDb’s list of top 250 films appears to have undergone an inexplicable change, details about which come courtesy of Darren Mooney, host of The 250 podcast. To summarize the change, Mooney suspects that IMDb has retooled the list’s algorithm to give more weight to ratings from English-language, specifically American, voters. See the full Twitter thread below explaining the suspicious change:

Click here to see the original post.

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Though IMDb’s top 250 list fluctuates often based on user ratings, this suspected change in the algorithm appears to have caused a drastic shift in the rankings. A lot of quintessential American classic have reappeared on the list, such as Steven Spielberg’s Jaws and James Cameron’s The Terminator, while The Help has made a surprising jump into the top 250. This apparent change has also caused a few titles that were already on the list to skyrocket towards the top, such as Million Dollar Baby, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II, and Gone with the Wind.

Because the list only has 250 fixed positions, a few titles had to be bumped to make room for new ones. Curiously, it’s been mostly non-American or foreign language films that have been hit the hardest. However, it’s not just world cinema that has taken a hit, as a lot of older silent films are down, though this is still consistent with the proposed theory given these films are still mostly popular outside the United States. It’s unclear if IMDb instituted the change with these results in mind, though it’s certainly alarming that their top 250 list now appears to be valuing non-American ratings (and thus international cinema) less.

Source: Darren Mooney/Twitter

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Adam Bentz
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Adam Bentz is a movie and TV news writer for Screen Rant. From a young age, Adam has been interested in a wide range of movies and television, but it was talented auteurs like Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Aaron Sorkin who ultimately sparked his interest in the craft. Motivated by his love for the screen, Adam studied creative writing with a concentration in screenwriting at Southern New Hampshire University.

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After graduating, Adam interned as a writer with The Borgen Project, a nonprofit organization working to end extreme poverty. Other than writing for Screen Rant, Adam reviews films on his website adambentz.wordpress.com

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