Where does the hub of the world’s film knowledge lie?

Is it in the Hollywood Museum in LA? Archived in the British Film Institute Library in Central London? Buried under the Walk of Fame on Hollywood and Vine?

Nope. It’s actually located just outside Bristol Parkway train station in the UK, a couple of miles from the M32 motorway.



Here, in an anonymous, modern, detached suburban house, 41-year-old Colin ‘Col’ Needham, founder of The Internet Movie Database (IMDb), sits at the centre of a vast digital web that holds details of over 1.2m movies from all around the world.

Disappointment awaits anyone who arrives expecting a vast open-plan office staffed by hundreds, surrounded by banks of whirring, purring servers clicking and humming their arcane binary language.

This isn’t the pampered playboy mansion of a dotcom millionaire. The unassuming, casually attired Needham won’t be drawn on the size of his bank balance following IMDb’s link-up with Amazon.

“I’m not about that, I’m just about the site,” he says, prodding his spectacles back onto the bridge of his nose.

But the bubbly enthusiasm and cat-who-got-the-cream grin suggest there’s a happy accountant somewhere...