Stephen Follows on Substack just asked What percentage of Hollywood film professionals are nepo babies?

He researched the top 100 movies of this millennium to find out.

He “counted someone as having family ties if a parent or close blood relative (i.e. a sibling, grandparent, uncle, aunt or cousin) worked in film or television before that person’s own entry into the industry.”

And there are a lot of key creatives with family in the industry already: 28% of top actors, 26% of directors and 18% of writers.

Crunching the numbers, Stephen concludes:

“Seven in ten of the biggest films of the past 25 years had at least one person with industry family at the heart of their creative team.”

The full post is worth reading because Stephen looks at the trend, if the films perform better and career impact. He finishes with:

“Family ties get you a modest start earlier, keep you in the game longer, and buy you another roll of the dice when a film disappoints. The surname is more of a safety net than some kind of accelerator or guarantee.”

My take: this is a new spin on, “It’s about who you know.” But it does go far in explaining why Hollywood seems slow to adapt to new trends. I just wish @stephenfollows would break out these stats for Canada, the UK and Australia.