Was wondering if anyone can recommend a similar website to IMDB - the Internet Movie DataBase, with a similar breadth of information about movies and television. It’s been my go-to for information on TV and movies for a decade, but it’s gone downhill in recent years - first they closed the message boards, which was the source of about half the useful information on the site, and now they’ve begun hiding info behind paywalls:
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Well … Wikipedia is where I first go for info on media. If I want to ask a question, I usually search right here, or ask it here. I kinda miss the message boards on IMDB, they were a great source of random opinion, often very amusingly – with its delightful anti-feminist, anti-black, anti-LGBTQ sentiments. Always good for a laugh. But then again, not always very useful.
Funny how the in-development stuff is now behind paywall. I’m guessing, if you really need to know about things in development, then you’re likely in the business, and so have the pockets to pay for this particular content. Betca everyone else with this sort of content now puts it behind the pay wall.
This one may do better in Café Society. Moved from General Questions.
samclem, moderator
Wikipedia has much more information about a movie. The plot details are wonderful. They often give notes on how the movie was developed and filming.
IMDB doesn’t come close. They do offer information on more movies.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Rotten Tomatoes hasn’t been mentioned. It gives full cast information and reviews.
Black Panther
I use both the IMDb and Wikipedia for research. The IMDb is more comprehensive, listing every credit, more details, quotes, and trivia ( though their definition of trivia include plenty of unremarkable items these days). Wikipedia is better for plot summaries (if they have any) and details about the narrative of the production – casting decisions, etc.
The discussion boards were pretty useless, though. Terrible interface and discussions that never rose above the eighth grade level.
The Movie Database seems to have limited information available compared to IDMb. RottenTomatoes has virtually none.
The TCMdb has some information, but it’s not really comparable.
Like Chuck, I do a lot of movie research and I always pair Wikipedia with IMDb because they overlap but each has information the other doesn’t. I don’t know what’s on IMDbPro and maybe that’s something i should look into.
Why should anybody else get the kind of detail that the go-to sites accrue? The fanatics have been posting there for two decades. They’re unlikely to switch and its equally unlikely there are comparable fanatics who haven’t bothered adding their information to draw on. If IMDb really is going downhill - what info was on the message boards? - then it’ll take another decade to build another site up to its level.
Moviechat is the closest I’ve seen to a message board. They backed up a few pages of each film from imdb, but new comments aren’t too common.
For casts and titles IMDB is still my go to but a few years ago something happened to the Trivia and Goods sections where they just became mostly useless.
Some discussion on the IMDB message boards was that juvenile, but it was also possible to have serious discussions about movies and TV shows. And the nice thing about those message boards is that you could start a discussion about any movie, however obscure, and someone would be willing to talk about it.
I don’t think this is a new development. IMDb Pro has been around for well over a decade, and AFAIK detailed info about films in production and development has always been there, not on IMDb (amateur).
IMDb Pro is intended for Hollywood insiders and has contact info for studios, agents, production companies, etc. I subscribed for professional reasons for a number of years, but haven’t bothered for quite a while. I haven’t seen any significant effort to move info that was previously available for free over to the Pro side. Does the OP have any specific examples or evidence of this supposed trend?
The trivia and goofs sections are crowdsouced, and occasionally inaccurate, but I haven’t seen any sign if them getting significantly worse recently.
IMDb was, IMHO, the first killer app of the Web, and remains one of the most useful and authoritative sites around. I use it more than any other site, except for SDMB and Facebook.
Only the one linked…I was surprised to find it, previously I hadn’t had any issues looking up movies / shows that were far from release to get an idea of when / how their release will happen and who will be featured. I assume this is standard for projects that aren’t firmly established yet, and eliminated half of what I use the site for - finding out about stuff I’m interested in that might be coming along down the road.
The other half was eliminated when they cut the message boards - to clarify, I wasn’t using them for discussions, but to check for threads indicating whether shows had been renewed or revived for additional seasons. Unfortunately that’s information that isn’t included with the site-provided info, and that’s probably not in the cards any time in the future either, with so much media the only possible way it could be kept up to date, was the way it was before; with users posting news about future seasons or sequels to movies in the now non-existent message boards.
Thanks everyone for the suggestions, will give them all a look 
I would suggest you not leap to any conclusions about a change in IMDb’s practices based on that one example. Films that are in production generally are listed on the free side with as much detail as available. For instance Avatar 2 and 3 are listed. Details about films that are still in development, or perhaps drop out of production and go into limbo because a deal fell through, will generally only be on the Pro side. But I don’t think that’s a change in policy.