Wikipedia talk:Notability (films)

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Notability (films) page.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed

Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3Auto-archiving period: 30 days

This project page does not require a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Film This page is within the scope of WikiProject Film. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see lists of open tasks and regional and topical task forces. To use this banner, please refer to the documentation. To improve this article, please refer to the guidelines.FilmWikipedia:WikiProject FilmTemplate:WikiProject Filmfilm articles

This page was nominated for deletion on February 27 2007. The result of the discussion was keep—the nomination was withdrawn.

NFILM states that a film is likely to be notable if it has "full-length reviews by two or more nationally known critics." To me, this means a critic that is notable enough to have their own Wikipedia article. Just because a critic has written for a website that is available (as all websites are!) worldwide, that does not make them "nationally known". This question stems from the deletion discussion for Art Machine, where a film that doesn't come close to passing GNG is getting "keep" votes based on reviews from unknown critics on three websites (in addition, one of the sites is probably not an RS). What say you, community? Wes sideman (talk) 11:00, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's not the best metric, but for me, a quick rule of thumb if the series has Rotten Tomatoes coverage, is looking at who is listed as their "Top Critics". But also, you'll want to look at the trade publications (Variety, Hollywood Reporter, and Deadline), major national newspapers (LA Times, NY Times, Chicago Tribute, etc) or magazines/magazine websites (Entertainment Weekly, Time, etc.), or "notable" critics like Roger Ebert. For what it's worth, Art Machine on Rotten Tomatoes, only has 2 reviews, neither of which are considered "Top Critics". - Favre1fan93 (talk) 02:50, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You are more or less saying that critics who write film reviews in well known national reliable sources are nationally known which was the outcome of previous discussions here, Atlantic306 (talk) 22:42, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

While the "nationally-known critic" criteria may be applicable for USA or European countries (with fairly homogenus linguistic tradition in each country), the scenario in the case of India can be very different. The critic of films in one language (say, Tamil language) may be unknown in the media that discusse Hindi language or Bengali language films. For comparison, a nationally-known French language film critic may be not be well-known in Spain. However, France and Spain being two separate countries, there is no issues regarding notability criteria of films, as the critics are well-known in the individual countries.

Since language and countries are different things, should not we use critics well-known in that particular languages's film-related media/literature, rather than whether they are well-known in a country? Dwaipayan (talk) 08:35, 9 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I support a change in wording from "nationally-known". The context should be the film's language or culture, not nationality. For universally distributed films that span countries and audiences, a minimum qualification of "nationally-known" makes sense. It also makes sense for nations where language or culture is equal to their nationality. A different discussion would be whether the review has to be by a person. Reviews in a review website could be vetted by a team, and not necessarily be credited to a named critic. In the currently ongoing Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Agra (2007 film) (2nd nomination) about a borderline notability case, we're trying to split hairs on what the actual intention of NFIM is w.r.t reviews and critics. Jay 💬 11:19, 9 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"Nationally known" film critics means critics that write for a well known national publication that gives them a national audience not that the critics are individually notable. If you suggest changing it you need to suggest alternative wording, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 18:39, 9 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also see here just above this for a related discussion. VickKiang (talk) 06:35, 11 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'd support rewording the criterion for clarity, but the consensus position is indeed that what's required is not necessarily that the critic themselves is individually famous (although that may indeed be the case sometimes), but that a review is still valid support for notability so long the publication that it appears in is an established and WP:GNG-worthy publication. We don't have standalone articles about Canadian film critics such as Radheyan Simonpillai or Norman Wilner or Craig Takeuchi, for example, but their film reviews most certainly are acceptable for establishing the notability of a film because they do appear in reliable source media.
Another thing to keep in mind is that with so many media outlets cutting back on their original arts reporting due to the media profitability crunch, more and more film reviewing is moving to exclusively online platforms such as RogerEbert.com or That Shelf or The Spool — and while some of those certainly qualify as reliable and notability-building reviews as well (for example, nobody in their right mind would ever challenge the legitimacy of a review by a writer at RogerEbert.com, given its legacy connection to probably the single most famous film critic in world history) there are others that would not (e.g. an amateur film critic reviewing films on his or her own self-published Blogspot). So obviously we still have to check for the reliability of a film review platform, but the solidity and reliability of the publication that is publishing the review counts for every bit as much as the established fame of the individual critic named in the byline. Bearcat (talk) 15:08, 27 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This part of the guideline is very, very old and possibly obsolete. Remember that this falls under "Other evidence of notability", meaning that WP:GNG is already applying as indicated earlier on the page. Maybe I'm wrong, but it feels like whenever people cite #1, they mean it more in the spirit of GNG. Perhaps we should just drop it entirely if we already cover GNG? Or at least refactor #1 to be more about pre-Internet films? Something like, "The film predates online coverage, was widely distributed in its country, and had a full-length review published in one of the country's nationwide publications"? Again, the goal of these points is to indicate the possibility of notability, not to guarantee it. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 15:32, 27 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The words widely distributed in its country and country's nationwide publications do not solve the intent of this discussion which is to remove the context of nationality from the wordings. Jay 💬 14:03, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest that we add the following text to the last paragraph of the WP:NFF section (existing language in green):

Additionally, films and television series that have already begun shooting, but have not yet been publicly released (theatres or video), should generally not have their own articles unless the production itself is notable per the notability guidelines.This means significant coverage beyond simple announcements of casting decisions or that photography has begun. It is unusual for a film's production to be noteworthy in itself, and typically only occurs for extraordinarily high-budget films, films where something goes wrong during production, or films with particularly controversial casting decisions that are extensively scrutinized prior to release. Similarly, films produced in the past which were either not completed or not distributed should not have their own articles, unless their failure was notable per the guidelines.

I think this addition reflects existing practice in AfD discussions; the addition is further needed because many inexperienced editors read NFF and take it to mean that if 3 sources publish a press release that a film has begun principal photography it is notable. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 02:30, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"where something goes wrong" probably need to be more neutral so editors won't limit the application to just wrong things. Like when a film is making something for the first time or never tried before or ... and thus received significant coverage, just like when something goes wrong. "controversial casting decisions" probably make "controversial decisions" so as to be general. Television series wording goes to MOS:TV, not sure where, but that seems the right place. — DaxServer (t · m · c) 08:51, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Strong oppose. A film may have its own article as long as filming has started and there is significant coverage, period. I know of no such "existing practice in AfD discussions". We passed up a similar proposal just a year ago. Nardog (talk) 11:41, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have no idea what "3 sources publish a press release" means. If Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, or Deadline Hollywood write about development, pre-production, and casting in their own words, is that the same thing as publishing a press release? I feel like there are four different categories:

1. a straight-up press release on a press-release website
2. a press release reproduced on an otherwise-legitimate website
3. a legitimate website barely rephrasing a press release in an article
4. a legitimate website using the press release and researching and gathering related details to have a full contextualization of the update

The aforementioned trade papers and similar publications do the latter, and it shows "sufficiently significant attention by the world at large". Then we also have production databases which indicate if a film has started filming, which aren't enough by themselves. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 14:04, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

After a long vacation of ten years, I am back.🙃 I have some questions regarding the current MOS consensus. What are the thoughts on having tables with box office data? Music track listings like this? Is this useful? These articles passed as GA back in 2011, so they obviously need updating. Thanks for any input. Mike Allen 15:47, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome back! May want to post this at WT:MOSFILM and not here at WT:NF. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 20:49, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

To be honest, I thought I was on that page. Too many tabs open. Mike Allen 21:01, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The section Future films, incomplete films, and undistributed films only says that such films should not have their own articles, but does the same also apply to mentioning when the films rights to a given property have been acquired by a studio, as with this article on the rights to Scott Snyder's novel being acquried by 20th Century Studios? I think it does, the principle is the same (Wikipedia will be filled with loads of material on the acquistion rights to properties that ended up not getting produced), but I'd like to hear what others here have to say. Nightscream (talk) 19:08, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's fine to mention in some cases — for instance, it's perfectly appropriate for an article about a writer and/or their novel to mention (if properly sourced) that the book has been optioned for development as a film, and it's perfectly acceptable for an actor's article to mention (if properly sourced) that they've been cast in a film that's in the production pipeline. Those mentions just don't have to preemptively redlink to a presumed future title for the film yet, and they certainly don't need to be given WP:UNDUE weight (such as by allowing the entire article to get bloated out with tons of content about the future film and its production), but it's perfectly fine to mention. And then if the film fails to ever materialize at all, we can just rewrite it for past tense or yank it out of the article entirely, depending on context. Bearcat (talk) 00:17, 3 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I want to propose that we beef up what this notability criterion says about notability on the basis of awards. At present, the criterion says solely that "the film has received a major award for excellence in some aspect of filmmaking", and then uses a footnote to vague out ("Standards have not been defined...") on the question of what constitutes a "major award" — with the result that this criterion has often been incorrectly interpreted to mean that any film award that exists at all confers an automatic notability pass regardless of the quality of sourcing that is or isn't used to support the "majorness" of the award.

The problem, of course, is that not all film awards are actually created equal. Some awards are more "major" and notability-making than other awards, some film festivals are more "major" and notability-making than other film festivals, and on and so forth. There exists, for example, a large network of fake "film festivals" that do not actually screen films for the general public at all, but in fact exist solely as vanity award mills, allowing any filmmaker to purchase an "award" so that they can claim to have won film festival awards in their marketing materials, as well as many real local or regional film festivals and regional film organizations which present real awards that still aren't necessarily always of broad national or international significance. (There have, for example, been attempts to claim that even just winning "Best Local Film" at the local film festival in a filmmaker's own hometown is a notability clinch for a film even if it's never had a single titch of beyond-hometown distribution or coverage at all. That didn't work, thankfully, but it has been attempted.)

Standards for this, in a nutshell, actually have been defined at AFD, and NFILM just hasn't caught up with codifying them yet. Essentially, a film is not automatically notable enough to have a Wikipedia article just because the body text has the word "award" in it. Notability on the basis of awards, rather, hinges on the degree to which the claim can or cannot be reliably sourced to GNG-worthy third-party coverage about the award presentation in media outlets or books independent of the claims. This is not solely a question of whether the award or festival has a Wikipedia article or not, as there may be film awards and festivals that have articles but probably should not, and film awards and festivals that do not have articles yet but probably should.

As a basis to start discussion, I would propose that the following types of awards indeed should be, and in fact generally are, accepted as notable awards:

• top-level national film awards that receive media coverage, such as the Academy Awards, the Canadian Screen Awards, the BAFTAs or the César Awards,
• significant regional or special interest film awards that receive media coverage, such as the Independent Spirit Awards or the Prix Iris,
• major nationally or internationally prominent film festivals that receive media coverage, such as Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Sundance or Toronto,
• significant craft guild awards that receive media coverage, such as the Screen Actors Guild Awards,
• film critics association awards that receive media coverage, such as the Toronto Film Critics Association and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

Awards presented at film festivals of more local or regional prominence, whose coverage is largely limited to their own local area, might not necessarily secure the notability of a film all by themselves if that's the only notability claim being made; however, a film that wins an award in this tier of film festivals will very often have other legitimate notability claims as well, so it's appropriate for awards of this type to be mentioned in film articles so long as they're properly sourced. Conversely, a film award should not confer notability on its winners at all if reliable source media coverage about the award presentation does not exist, such that you have to rely on the film studio's own self-published marketing materials, the award's own self-published press releases about itself, social networking posts or YouTube video clips of the award presentation to source the claim. And by the same token, an award shouldn't confer notability just because it seems to serve a similar purpose to another award, but rather the depth of media coverage that the award does or doesn't actually get should still be the determinant. For example, Canada's Joey Awards are not a notability-making award just because they're presented to young actors and thus have a similar "mandate" to the American Young Artist Awards, because they don't get the coverage that the Young Artist Awards get.

Similarly, films are able to claim notability on the basis of nominations for awards, but this is still vulnerable to misinterpretation and abuse. Generally, award nominations are valid notability claims if the award curates and releases a shortlist of finalists between the "consideration of all eligible submissions" and "announcement of the final winner" phases, but not if the film is an automatic "nominee" just by virtue of its presence at the event. For example, every feature film that screens at the Toronto International Film Festival is inherently a "nominee" for the People's Choice Award, so being a "nominee" for that award is not a meaningful or notability-boosting statement in and of itself (but boy, do editors still try it anyway) — whereas the Academy Awards release a shortlist of five finalists per category between the submission deadline and the announcement of the winner at the ceremony, so being an Oscar nominee is a more significant distinction. Conversely, TIFF's Platform Prize, a special award reserved for the eight to twelve films playing in one specific program whose titles were curated for the express purpose of competing for that award, has a stronger basis for being claimed as a noteworthy nomination. As with award wins, this should properly depend on the ability to reliably source, in references independent of content self-published by the awards committee, that a shortlist of nominees was announced somewhere between the "everything's a potential nominee" and "we know the winner now" phases of the process.

Which is admittedly a lot of words to say that essentially what I'm proposing here is that we much more clearly define a "major" award as one that can be shown to garner reliable source coverage about it in sources independent of itself — which, when you get right down to it, is basically already the rule that's typically applied when "award-winning" films go to AFD (films that claim notability on the basis of unsourced or primary sourced awards from minor film festivals routinely get thrown in the trash compactor, for example), and just hasn't been codified as such here yet. So that's what I'm putting forward for discussion, and would welcome any input. Bearcat (talk) 23:43, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The current wording states,

"Additionally, films that have already begun shooting, but have not yet been publicly released (theatres or video), should generally not have their own articles unless the production itself is notable per the notability guidelines."

which is a bit ambiguous, and is being used by editors to mass-delete articles of unreleased films that are currently filming or in post-production. In this particular case, the article was moved to drafts even though it had more "keep" votes.

Could the text provide us with an exact criteria as to what would make such films notable, since the "notability" criteria for released and unreleased films won't be the same, as analysis/themes/reviews of unreleased films will obviously not be available until release. Furthermore, production details are almost always kept under wraps until the film is about to release, to prevent plot leaks. So what exactly would make the production notable? Krimuk2.0 (talk) 06:26, 9 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Krimuk2.0 There is one proposal above Wikipedia talk:Notability (films)#Proposing addition of more language regarding pre-release notability to NFF section — DaxServer (t · m · c) 09:35, 9 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

And an RFC ended with no change :/ Wikipedia talk:Notability (films)#RfC: Should we replace the NFF policy with new text? — DaxServer (t · m · c) 09:36, 9 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

And yet, they seem to be using that as definitive policy to draftify articles such as this. Krimuk2.0 (talk) 10:20, 9 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The AfC outcome is not wrong here. Editors sometimes mistakenly believe NFF mandates film articles to exist in the mainspace just because principal photography or final voice recording has begun, but this is not a requirement. WP:GNG should be used to determine whether a film is notable, in addition to satisfying the NFF criteria. InfiniteNexus (talk) 17:35, 9 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

So kindly highlight exact points that make unreleased films notable (as the wordings at both WP:NFFF WP:GNG are not definitive), so that this charade of deletion requests can be done away with. Krimuk2.0 (talk) 17:53, 9 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You're not wrong, but I think there's a fair amount of confusion as to what is considered significant, GNG-establishing coverage pre-release. My personal understanding was that there needs to be real analysis or clearly independent description of the production/film, but was voted down when I proposed making that a formal part of the guideline above. Results like the AfDs pointed to in this discussion, however, seem to align with my view. We could also draw the line elsewhere, e.g. saying that sober announcements of casting decisions in Variety are significant coverage but ebullient puff prose or interviews with actors in Times of India is not, but I think that such decisions would likely end up strongly reinforcing systemic bias due to the fact that pre-release film press in much of the world outside of North America almost always falls into the latter category. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:53, 9 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I propose a film should meet this criteria (all three) before an article is added to mainspace:

• Must have completed principal photography or voice recording
• Must have a distributor
• Must have a scheduled release date

Mike Allen 03:04, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think that this is a reasonable standard for 99% of films, and just needs a carveout for the few films whose production is so notorious that it clearly meets GNG despite failure to meet these criteria. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 03:58, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Why does anything have to be "notorious" or negative to warrant an article? Filming can be smooth and a wonderful, happy experience for all and still have its own article. Krimuk2.0 (talk) 06:46, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't interpret Rosguill's note to mean the film must be notorious in some negative sense, like Rust, just that a wonderful, happy experience for all doesn't get the same press that would put it above the criteria Mike has proposed. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 14:57, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Which is exactly why I feel standard, non-fluffy coverage of casting/filming/development from high-quality sources should suffice. Krimuk2.0 (talk) 15:04, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Correct, my point was that Mike Allen's proposed criteria could be interpreted as saying that only films that have completed filming (etc.) get articles. While this is a reasonable standard for most films, there are occasionally films whose production is notable enough to merit an article despite falling short of these criteria (see List of abandoned and unfinished films for examples, and note how few of the blue links point to standalone articles about the unfinished film; amusingly, the example I had in mind of a notorious unfinished film, Dune (Jodorowsky film) doesn't have an independent article) _signed, Rosguill ^talk 16:08, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You're right, I should have clarified. There are exceptions with productions that have received significant wide spread coverage in reliable sources but never released. See Midnight Rider, Rust and Batgirl. Mike Allen 16:32, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tiger 3 seemed to meet all the criteria for WP:NFF, yet it was deleted. Is being the third in the already popular Tiger franchise not enough to denote its notability? Having one of the three Khans in the lead and another in a cameo not enough? Being part of the YRF Spy Universe (one of India's equivalents to the Marvel Cinematic Universe) is not enough? I don't want to sound harsh or defiant, but what could anyone have done to prevent its deletion? Kailash29792 (talk) 10:39, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note that this recent addition to NFILM stemmed from WT:FILM#Useless superhero character articles. The discussion, which only lasted 2 weeks and had limited participation, dropped the idea of adding to NFILM, but it was ultimately added anyway. The latest discussion is at WT:FILM#Survey aftermath. Adding a searchable note here for future reference. --GoneIn60 (talk) 16:26, 24 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that ProductionList.com is a site where, similar to imdb, anyone can register an account and submit production information. It does not appear to have editorial oversight. I ask because I corrected a simple error in a reference on The Passion of the Christ: Resurrection, and reading the references further, I noticed that there do not appear to be any reliable sources that state principal photography has commenced. There's a handful that predict that principal photography would commence in April 2023, but nothing after that. ProductionList.com looks like it's being used as such a source, which is why I'm asking. It would be surprising to me if a sequel to a film that had such a high profile had started shooting and not one film news site had reported on it, which is why I'm suspicious of the bare entry at [1]. Fred Zepelin (talk) 16:54, 10 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I just noticed that even that webpage was last updated on 02/27/2023. So I don't believe that in this case, the source qualifies as reliable regarding the start of production in any way. Fred Zepelin (talk) 17:16, 11 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Can I ask, what is the point of having WP:NFF if it's not enforced? There appear to be over 700 articles on unreleased films, if Category:Upcoming films and its sub-cats can be believed, some not being planned for release until 2026. I can move such articles to draft space when I come across them while doing New Pages Patrol; they will be moved back to mainspace. I can nominate such films for deletion, again quoting WP:NFF, but every time, there will be an AfD with exactly the same arguments - "it's being released soon, so why delete it?"; "there are sources in the article"; "the production company has its own article therefore it's a notable production", and so on. Could we either make WP:NFF stronger and more plainly worded; or just scrap it entirely, and let WP:GNG and WP:NFILM apply? Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 15:49, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's an excellent question, Bastun, one I'd love to see resolved here. While I don't think the text is worded in an unclear way, I would like to see the community actually enforce it. (The same problem exists with musical works. "The album will be released soon, anyway..." or, worse, "If we delete it, somebody will just recreate it anyway...")

I would oppose scrapping WP:NFF, but if the consensus is to not enforce it, it's better to just remove the imaginary guideline. Unfortunately, I'm not a WP:FILM regular (or even a WP:N regular), so my preferences may not count for much. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 17:36, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]