The year of a film is determined by the release dates, not the year of production. https://www.themoviedb.org/bible/movie/59f3b16d9251414f20000009 TMDb does not have a field for the year of production.

Ok which means again its incorrect, production date is release date and tmdb is the only site on this planet that is using digital date as release date. IMDB has opposite date, wiki has opposite date, original movie site has opposite date, the TMDB is the only site on the planet with such dates. Horror, plex is bound to TMDB we cant use pure IMDB, automatic recognition cant get the exact title because TMDB is using non-existent date.

tmdb is the only site on this planet that is using digital date as release date

The system has six different release date types: premiere, theatrical, theatrical (limited), digital, physical, and tv. This section explains how the system determines the year of a film, based on the release dates entered. A theatrical release (when entered) will always take precedence over the other release date types.

production date is release date

Not necessarily; sometimes a film will be released years after its production has completed.

@loopdemack

...production date is release date...

These are two completely different dates. I would love to be able to add copyright year used in movie end titles, but it wouldn't help you at all because

IMDB has opposite date

IMDb doesn't support production (or copyright) date either. The year you see in the title on IMDb is derived from the date of the earliest release, including festival releases (source). The only difference between TMDb and IMDb is that TMDb derives the year in the title (and the primary release date returned by API) in this order:

1. A "limited" or "theatrical" release
   
2. A "premiere" release
   
3. Any other release (digital, physical or TV)
   

(source)

TMDB is using non-existent date

How can TMDb primary release date be non-existent if it is derived from the existing release date as explained above?

Anyway, if you have a problem with Plex showing different date than IMDb because of TMDb, you should contact Plex developers. All our release dates can be obtained via TMDb API using the same API request which application makes to get movie details (using append_to_response=release_dates (source 1, source 2)), so Plex or any other application can derive its own movie year to show, e.g. using IMDb approach. If you have a problem matching your movies, you should contact Plex developers and ask them to use release_date.gte and release_date.lte instead of primary_release_year in their TMDb API discover requests (source). This way your year will be matched against all TMDb release dates (including the year used by IMDb – assuming we have the same release information as IMDb), not just against TMDb primary release date (which can differ from IMDb).

On the IMDB USA 18 January 2020 (Santa Barbara International Film Festival) Iran 1 February 2020 (Fajr Film Festival) USA 8 March 2020 (Cinequest Film Festival) Spain 8 October 2020 (Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival) USA 9 October 2020 (Nightstream Film Festival) Spain 20 November 2020 (Molins Film Festival)

On the wiki The film had its world premiere at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on January 20, 2020

@talestalker said:

@loopdemack

...production date is release date...

These are two completely different dates. I would love to be able to add copyright year used in movie end titles, but it wouldn't help you at all because

IMDB has opposite date

IMDb doesn't support production (or copyright) date either. The year you see in the title on IMDb is derived from the date of the earliest release, including festival releases (source). The only difference between TMDb and IMDb is that TMDb derives the year in the title (and the primary release date returned by API) in this order:

1. A "limited" or "theatrical" release
   
2. A "premiere" release
   
3. Any other release (digital, physical or TV)
   

(source)

TMDB is using non-existent date

How can TMDb primary release date be non-existent if it is derived from the existing release date as explained above?

Anyway, if you have a problem with Plex showing different date than IMDb because of TMDb, you should contact Plex developers. All our release dates can be obtained via TMDb API using the same API request which application makes to get movie details (using append_to_response=release_dates (source 1, source 2)), so Plex or any other application can derive its own movie year to show, e.g. using IMDb approach. If you have a problem matching your movies, you should contact Plex developers and ask them to use release_date.gte and release_date.lte instead of primary_release_year in their TMDb API discover requests (source). This way your query will match your year against all TMDb release dates (including the year used by IMDb – assuming we have the same release information as IMDb), no just against TMDb primary release date.

As I asked Plex support whatever is in the movie title that's what would be derive by the plex agent which means if (2021) is in the title that would be the date. I think that year in the title should be first premiere release date to get unification with the IMDB.

On the IMDB USA 18 January 2020 (Santa Barbara International Film Festival) Iran 1 February 2020 (Fajr Film Festival) USA 8 March 2020 (Cinequest Film Festival) Spain 8 October 2020 (Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival) USA 9 October 2020 (Nightstream Film Festival) Spain 20 November 2020 (Molins Film Festival)

On the wiki The film had its world premiere at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on January 20, 2020

It's TMDb creator's decision to show different year than IMDb. It can't affect any TMDb API users, as I explained in the last paragraph of my previous post. So again, if you have any problem with Plex handling TMDb release information, you should contact Plex developers. They can easily alter their code to use and show the same year as IMDb.

As I asked Plex support whatever is in the movie title that's what would be derive by the plex agent which means if (2021) is in the title that would be the date. I think that year in the title should be first premiere release date to get unification with the IMDB.

And that's the problem. Again – Plex developers are free to change their code, but apparently they don't want to do so. I'm Plex user too and I use my own customized Plex TMDb metadata agent, so I'm quite confident it's feasible .

Edit: As for your request to change the way TMDb derives primary release date – this is for the TMDb admin to decide, but I don't think it is planned. After all, as I already said, in most cases it can be handled on the application end.

TMDB needs to make production/release year compulsory, Too many released films mislisted as forthcoming.

https://letterboxd.com/films/popular/upcoming/on/amazon-usa/size/small/

https://letterboxd.com/films/popular/upcoming/on/apple-itunes-ie/size/small/

https://letterboxd.com/films/popular/upcoming/on/amazon-video-us/size/small/