'I used to just rewind the VHS tapes' - the origin story of IMDb

The Internet Movie Database would not exist without 1980s video technology, says founder Col Needham.


Saturday Morning
4 min read
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Caption:IMDb founder Col Needham has been named "the most powerful Brit in Hollywood".Photo credit:IMDb

After seeing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as a five-year-old, Col Needham fell deeply in love with movies. Things got really serious, though, in 1981 when his family got their first VHS player.

To keep a record of what he was watching - including Alien 14 times in 14 days when he was 14 - the young computer whiz "created a little database".

"I used to just rewind the VHS tapes and type out the credits," Needham tells RNZ's Saturday Morning.

Snow White exclaims as birds fly above her, and a witch and evil queen stand behind her.

The original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs from 1937 was Disney's first full-length animated feature film.

Disney

In 1985, when the internet was "mostly mailing lists and bulletin boards", Needham first went online from his home in Bristol and started connecting and sharing lists of film credits with other film fans around the world.

In 1990, he published a piece of software called rec.arts.movies movie database, then in 1993 launched "Cardiff Internet Movie Database" - one of the first hundred websites to appear.

Three years later, Needham was maintaining his movie database project during evenings and weekends while still working full-time as a computer scientist.

One night, he and his wife hired a babysitter for their three-year-old twin daughters and went out for a movie, some pizza and a discussion about whether he should quit his day job and try to make a career with movie data on the burgeoning internet.

Tom Cruise, wearing tight black clothing, a head set and gloves, hovers above a pane of glass.

In the 1996 action thriller Mission Impossible, Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt - a highly skilled agent for a secret government agency.

IMDb

In the film they saw that night - the first Mission Impossible - Needham and his wife were powerfully impressed by Tom Cruise artfully browsing the "web" in black electron-powered gloves.

"We headed over to the pizza place across from the cinema and essentially looked to each other and said, 'Well, if the internet is good enough for Tom Cruise, it's good enough for us.'

"I gave in my notice at work the next day and IMDb became my full-time employment."

In 1997, without "external funding or grand plans", the imdb.com website was launched. A year later, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos offered to buy them out.

"On the 24th of April, 1998, we became a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com. We were the first company they ever bought."

Jeff Bezos - a bald man in a suit - looks downward and wears a slight smile.

Jeff Bezos's tech company Amazon bought IMDb in 1998.

MANDEL NGAN / AFP



IMDb's 28-year partnership with Amazon - which includes providing data for Prime Video's X-Ray service and the virtual assistant technology Alexa - has been "a very thrilling adventure," says Needham, who stepped down as chief executive earlier this year and now advises the new chief executive, Nikki Santoro.

Margaret Qualley looks tenderly at something to the right of camera and has wavy platinum blonde hair and red lipstick.

In the 2025 comedy drama Blue Moon, Margaret Qualley plays aspiring stage designer Elizabeth Weiland - the protege of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart, played by Ethan Hawke.

Sony Pictures



This week, the self-described "film guy" is celebrating IMDb's 35th birthday at the BFI London Film Festival. A highlight so far was the "awesome" comedy drama Blue Moon by American indie director Richard Linklater, he says.

Although he spotted Tom Cruise across the room at a recent British Film Institute dinner, Needham hasn't yet had the opportunity to tell the age-defying action hero how pivotal Mission Impossible was for the internet's go-to movie website.

"He is so popular, even when he's at an event with people in the industry, you really can't get anywhere near him."

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