The Movie Database Support

I think I've noticed this for a while now but why does the Primary Release date for movies prioritize USA dates over other countries?

For example at the moment, for this short film, even though the production company is currently set to Canada, the USA digital release date is being shown on the page as opposed to the Theatrical and Premiere Canada dates...

6 replies (on page 1 of 1)

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I seem to recall that this decision was made because of the dominance of the USA in the entertainment industry and the fact that most of the visitors here are from the USA.

Hi @tmdb24407783,

We don't default to the US. The rules for which date gets marked as the primary are located here, with no preference to any country.

What makes you think the release date for this entry is the US one? The API is about the only place you can really see the "primary" release date anymore, and it's showing the first Canadian date.

{
  "id": 514237,
  "release_date": "2016-10-01",
  "title": "Turbulence",
  ...
}

@travisbell said:

Hi @tmdb24407783,

We don't default to the US. The rules for which date gets marked as the primary are located here, with no preference to any country.

What makes you think the release date for this entry is the US one? The API is about the only place you can really see the "primary" release date anymore, and it's showing the first Canadian date.

{
  "id": 514237,
  "release_date": "2016-10-01",
  "title": "Turbulence",
  ...
}

I guess I didnt mean the Primary Release Date. I just mean the release date that is shown on the page.

@tmdb24407783 said:

I guess I didnt mean the Primary Release Date. I just mean the release date that is shown on the page.

When I replied before, I figured you meant the release date shown on the page; and my answer was referring to that question not the one you first stated. I think my answer is correct, because I seem to recall this being discussed a while ago, and that's the answer we got back then.

Yes, I remember that discussion as well. Moon Doggie's explanation agrees w/what I recall from a while ago.

Thanks for the extra detail @tmdb24407783. @pt100 and @Moon_Doggie are mostly right with a few notes:

  1. If there's a release in your account's set country, we show that (for me Turbulence shows the Canadian release data for example)
  2. This behaviour has already been tweaked in v4.5. In the new v4.5, if there's isn't a matching release country then I default to the "primary" release (this is different than today's behaviour).

Hoe that makes sense.

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