Andhadhun Tops IMDb India Charts: ‘Audience Within India Has An Influence Throughout The World’, Says Founder

Col Needham, the founder and CEO of IMDB, in his maiden visit to the country spoke with The Hindu on Wednesday (12 December), and announced the top 10 Indian films of 2018, with the intention to focus on Indian users, reported The Hindu.

The films voted as most popular, in chronological order are - the Hindi thriller Andhadhun, Tamil films - thriller Ratsasan and romantic drama 96, the Tamil-Telugu bilingual biographical drama Mahanati and the Hindi comedy-drama Badhai Ho.

Needham said that observing the rise of regional films made the company launch the top 50 lists for Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam films. The reason, Needham says is that India is the only country where there is a vibrant, cross-cultural film culture.

Mr Needham is hopeful that with the growing number of IMDB users in India, the Indian content will find an international audience. He says they have two lakh and growing pages regarding films, TV and related personalities. The pages are viewed by 70 per cent Indians and 30 per cent foreigners. With Indians being the number two regarding user base, he says this means that, “the audience within India is influencing the world.”

Needham says that with India producing the most significant number of films, it's a tough task to document them all. He also added that a substantial portion of data is given by fans of certain movies, shows or genres.

Also, as per him, in the US , film professionals are aware of this and update their pages. A lot of them increasingly use IMDbPro to make hiring and casting decisions. He cites the example of Robert Pattinson who was discovered for Twilight through IMDbPro. He says that IMDB is slowly growing in India too and recounts how Sriram Raghavan stated he was an IMDB user in a VIP cocktail party.