Editor’s Note: This post was updated on August 21, 2024, to reflect the expansion of Tableau’s licensing arrangement with IMDb, which now includes TV data.

August 21, 2024

Tableau Adds TV Data from IMDb to Popular Data Visualization Campaign

Starting today, TV and data lovers will now be able to create and share visualizations about their favorite TV shows. 

For the next year, IMDb will share a selection of its TV dataset on Tableau Public, which allows users to explore, create, and share data visualizations online. Select submissions received before December 31, 2024, will be featured on Tableau websites, social media channels, and in presentations at Tableau Conference 2025 in San Diego.

Salesforce take: “Our community has loved exploring and developing vizzes with movie data from IMDb,” said Elizabeth Maxson, Chief Marketing Officer, Tableau. “We’ve seen so many members of the DataFam — from data novices to expert analysts — dive deeper into their passion for the entertainment space and we can’t wait to see what they develop next.”

The availability of TV data marks an expansion of Tableau’s licensing arrangement with IMDb, which launched last November and has resulted in more than 700 vizzes created by the Tableau community. In addition to the new TV data, movie data from IMDb will still be available to Tableau’s community through August of 2025. Read more about that program below and explore Tableau user-created movie data visualizations from the first year of the campaign here.

November 6, 2023

Tableau is teaming up with IMDb – the world’s most popular and authoritative source for information on movies, TV shows, and celebrities – to empower movie lovers and analytics fanatics to create and share free data visualizations about their favorite films.

How it works: For the next two years, IMDb will share a selection of its massive dataset on Tableau Public, which allows users to explore, create, and share data visualizations online. The IMDb data sets are available to Tableau users through a licensing arrangement between IMDb and Tableau.

• Users can analyze a vast collection of movie-related data points licensed by IMDb, including cast and crew, user ratings, genres, plots, and more. 
• And, with a step-by-step starter kit provided by Tableau, data viz beginners all the way up to experts can tap into — and experiment with — the pop culture-fueled data. 
• Select submissions received before May 2, 2024 will be featured on Tableau websites, social media channels, and in presentations at Tableau Conference, April 29 – May 1, 2024 in San Diego.

The Salesforce Take: “Tableau is committed to enabling 10 million people with data skills by 2027. We want to inspire and educate beginners, experts, and everyone in between to use data in ways that can make a real impact on their lives and organizations,” said Elizabeth Maxson, SVP and Chief Marketing Officer, Tableau. “We are excited to collaborate with IMDb, and allow our community members to flex their creative muscle and experiment with data about the movies they know and love.”

Tableau is committed to enabling 10 million people with data skills by 2027. We want to inspire and educate beginners, experts, and everyone in between to use data in ways that can make a real impact on their lives and organizations

Elizabeth Maxson, SVP and Chief Marketing Officer, Tableau

The IMDb take: “Our new collaboration with Tableau will empower entertainment fans and professionals to surface and share insights from the IMDb database in visually compelling ways,” said Nikki Santoro, Chief Operating Officer, IMDb. “This is an exciting, unique opportunity for users to showcase their love of film for a global audience by creating new and distinctive data visualizations that will entertain and inform movie fans.”

The Tableau ambassador take: Members of the Tableau community shared how they used the new partnership to flex their creative muscle.

• Lindsay Betzendahl, Tableau Visionary, used the tools to build a visualization that highlights her favorite actor, Jim Carrey.
  • “Tableau is more than just a tool to make charts – it brings stories to life by harmonizing the power of analytics with creative, flexible designs,” Betzendahl said. “This collaboration with IMDb allowed me to experiment with unique and enjoyable datasets.”

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• Irene Diomi, Tableau Visionary, visualized Meryl Streep’s IMDb movie ratings from 2000-2022, measuring some of her most iconic films against one another.
  • “Tableau not only provides deep insights from data but also blends storytelling, art, and data, allowing us to get really creative,” Diomi explained.

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• Zainab Ayodimeji, Tableau Public Ambassador, captured the IMDb scores of renowned director Christopher Nolan, along with other details like genre and runtime.
  • “I love the intricate storytelling abilities Tableau allows for. For this viz, I channeled my inner Christopher Nolan to visualize the IMDb scores of his movies in a visually creative style,” said Ayodimeji.

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• Priya Padham, Tableau Public Ambassador, visualized the top movies from 1990 to 2023 based on ratings from IMDb, correlated with each movie’s top three billed actors.
  • “Tableau allows us to go beyond the conventional spreadsheet and become artists with data. We are able to paint a picture by telling compelling stories, and dig deeper to reveal hidden insights. This viz combines two of my loves — data and movies — and it was a blast to create a ‘movie poster’ style visualization for this campaign,” said Padham.

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• Kevin Wee, Tableau Public Ambassador, illustrated the film careers of the star-studded cast of “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once.”
  • “As a movie lover and avid Tableau user, I was thrilled to get hold of the IMDb movie dataset. Thanks to Tableau’s power as a data processing and visualization tool, I was able to turn my wildest imagination into a visible representation quickly and flowingly,” said Wee.

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• Jessica Moon, Tableau Public Ambassador, dissects movies starring Ryan Reynolds and Ryan Gosling, offering a genre, filmmaker, ratings, and release year analysis.
  • “This viz allows move lovers to dive deeper into Ryan Reynolds and Ryan Gosling’s filmography with an intricate cast and connections network graph.” said Moon.

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More information:

• Explore the new partnership here
• Learn more about Tableau