Film Dialogue from 2,000 Screenplays

The Pudding’s analysis of 2,000 screenplays quantified gender disparity in Hollywood dialogue with unprecedented rigor. Using scrollytelling — a technique that was still novel in 2017 — the piece revealed that in most films, men speak significantly more than women, even in films with female leads.

The project helped establish The Pudding as the defining publication for visual essays on the web. Its combination of rigorous data analysis, compelling scrollytelling narrative, and clean D3-based visuals set a template that dozens of newsrooms and studios would follow.

It also demonstrated the power of systematic data collection applied to cultural questions. Rather than arguing from anecdote, the piece let 2,000 data points make the argument — a model for data journalism that treats culture as seriously as politics or economics.