World’s biggest movie website run by ’self-confessed geek’ from UK house

LONDON - The world’s biggest movie website is run by a ’self-confessed technology geek’ from a house in Britain.

Colin Needham, 43, began the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) in 1990 as a hobby, and despite selling to Amazon he still works as Chief Executive, and runs the website from his former family home in Stoke Gifford, Bristol.

The website, which is the 42nd most popular on the planet, attracts some 57 million unique users every month, and it has so much power and influence that it has the ability to launch and crush Hollywood careers.

IMDb has information on over 3.2 million actors and industry professionals and a database of more than 1.5 million films.

Manchester-born Needham confessed he never expected his obsession with films to grow in to the Internet’s most comprehensive source of information on films and television.

“I have always done this because I love film. The idea is to point people who like films into the right direction,” the Daily Mail quoted Needham, who owned his first computer in 1979, at the age of 12, as saying.

“I wanted to share my love of films and help people find things they might want to watch themselves.

“I have always been into technology and film and I can still remember going to see Stars Wars. It had a massive effect on me,” he said.

After studying at Leeds University he moved to Bristol and took a job as a software researcher with Hewlett Packard, and at the same time he began to compile his own database of film facts, which led to the start of the website.

A chance e-mail encounter in 1989 with a film fan in California prompted Needham to publish his own personal database online.

The list was published once a month and fellow fans could log on and download it to their own computers.

He sold IMDb to Amazon in 1998 and was made a Vice President of the online retailer, and his role is to oversee future strategy and make sure his creation stays true to its roots. (ANI)