When someone has seen nearly 17,000 films, to be among their favourite filmmakers is quite an achievement.
Col Needham, Bristol-based founder of the IMDb website, regularly watches two or three movies a day – more at weekends and festivals – and still considers the work of Somerset’s Edgar Wright to be up there with the best.
Col and Karen Needham in the Long Gallery at The Bishops Palace, a location used in ‘Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light’ and ‘The Spanish Princess’.
Screen Somerset recently joined Col and his wife Karen on a film fan’s visit to one of Somerset’s key filming locations, the city of Wells. Wells Cathedral and the Bishop’s Palace were first on the itinerary, between them having appeared in Wolf Hall, Dungeons and Dragons, Alex Rider, The Huntsman: Winter’s War, 3 Body Problem and Poldark, to name just a few. And most recently, of course, the summer blockbuster Masters of The Universe released this month.
“Wells is wonderful,” said Col. “So much variety in terms of locations and buildings, all within a short distance.”
But it’s Hot Fuzz that’s most synonymous with Wells, being filmed in the city but directed and co-written by one of its most famous sons, Edgar Wright. Celebrating its 20th anniversary next year, it still attracts visitors in their droves.
“With Hot Fuzz I think it’s a bit of everything – the pace, the direction, the editing, the comedy, and a cast just having so much fun. It balances the tone between comedy and drama so well, the whole script is quotable and there are new things to spot on each viewing.
Jeremy Coles, Visit Experience Manager, shows Col Needham around the Undercroft at The Bishops Palace, used for filming scenes in ‘Snow White and The Huntsman’ and ‘Poldark’.
“I’m a big fan of all of Edgar’s work. Although I am older, we grew up with similar cultural references and we have similar senses of humour. It’s impossible to pick favourites; his early and later work are equally beloved.”
Col typically attends eight film festivals a year, including the famous Sundance Film Festival where in 2015 he met Edgar.
“He’s a massive film buff, so we hit it off,” said Col. “We sat on different judging panels and ended up trying to outdo each other with the number of films watched over the ten days. It was nip and tuck throughout but Edgar eventually won 35 to my 34.”
If you wanted to find out anything Hot Fuzz, you’d probably now go straight to IMDb (Internet Movie Database). Whatever your screen-based question, if you look for answers on the web, the chances are you’ll be there in a matter of seconds and the stats surrounding Col’s online brainchild are mind-blowing. With more than 250 million unique visitors every month, it’s one of the top 50 most visited sites on the web and when it launched was one of the first 100 websites to ever exist.
Matthew Minter, Head of Filming at Wells Cathedral, shows Col around the Chapterhouse, recently seen in ‘Masters of the Universe’.
The founding of IMDb is itself a remarkable story (though Col says not dramatic enough to warrant a screen adaptation), rooted in someone who managed to take their twin passions of film and technology and turn them into a runaway business success.
Growing up in Manchester in the 1970s, Col’s obsession with film started at the age of five when he won tickets see ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ in a newspaper colouring in competition. It later transpired that his grandmother had secretly tidied up his felt-tip handiwork during the night, but the seed was sown.
Matthew Minter and Col tour filming locations in the cathedral.
A self-taught computer programmer, Col was writing and selling computer games by the age of 14, which kept him in “VHS tapes, clothes and driving lessons”. At the same time he was watching endless films and from 1 January 1980 started keeping track of the details in a diary.
“I was always really interested in the film credits and the paper diary didn’t really work for that, so I created my own database. You couldn’t buy database software at that time, so I created my own. I would rewind VHS tapes and type in the end credits. If you go onto IMDb now and look up Ridley Scott’s ‘Alien’ from 1979, I typed in that cast list in the summer of 1981”.
After studying Computer Science at Leeds University, Col moved to Bristol in 1988 to work in software at the Hewlett Packard Research Lab. By this time he was part of a film enthusiast group on Usenet (a pre-internet global digital discussion group and file-sharing platform) and shared his film credit database with the group of several thousand members spread across the globe. Other group members started collating different pieces of data – composers, directors, etc – and in October 1990 Col published his IMDb software into the group so a handful of volunteers amongst the group could feed it more and different details.
In the summer of 1993, with some help from a Cardiff University PHD student, IMDb moved onto the fledgling worldwide web. “At that point the web wasn’t commercial. Everyone was a volunteer working on it because we loved it,” said Col.
“There was no advertising. We were just publishing data in a readable format to share our love of film. If someone had said to us ‘do you think you could do this professionally?’, we’d have said ‘No. You can’t make money on the web!’.”
The Hot Fuzz walking tour in Wells.
Two years later the internet went mainstream. Magazines and TV content started to appear about the web and traffic to IMDb grew exponentially. In January 1996 IMDb was incorporated as a business, with shares divided between its 20 contributors spread across the world.
“And the beauty of the internet meant that I didn’t have to leave the South West to run the company, so I didn’t,” said Col.
IMDb bought its first server on the company credit card and a formal launch coincided with the 1996 Oscars. The credit card was paid-off two weeks later with their first paid advertising. By the summer it had sold its first film studio advertising – to 20th Century Fox to promote the release of Independence Day. IMDb as we know it had left the launchpad.
“That was the cue to give up the day job, but it was still a risk. I was leaving a steady salary to become the first full-time employee of what was still a crazy start-up, and at a time when we had three-year-old twins at home and my wife was in full-time childcare mode.
“But as the revenue expanded to cover another monthly salary I’d call up a one of the volunteer shareholders and say ‘we’ve got enough to pay you, quit your day job and join the team’.”
The rest is history. In 1998 IMDb became a subsidiary of a seven-month-old online bookseller called Amazon that went on to become the global retail and entertainment giant we know today.
Col continued to run IMDb as its CEO until the start of last year when he moved into the role of Executive Chair. That means he now advises where needed, helps build industry relations and makes sure that the original film geek culture that gave birth to IMDb remains firmly in place.
Forty-five years on from the paper diary, Col’s voracious appetite for film remains as strong as ever. The circa 17,000 films watched are ‘unique’ films, not the multiple viewings. His all-time favourite, Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’, watched more than 50 times, only counts as one title for his records.
Many of these were watched from a cinema seat rather than at home. Pre-pandemic he and Karen would be at the local cinema four times a week and they still go regularly, including a Tuesday afternoon date movie tradition.
With just 703 films watched last year, 2025 was a low year by Col’s unusual standards. In 2024 he saw 767 and in 2023 863. His busiest ever year was the year 2000 when he watched an eye watering (possibly literally) 985 films.
“It depends on the day. On a regular evening I’ll always watch one film, often two. At a weekend it can be ten, then you add in film festivals… you’d be surprised how quickly it adds up.”
Screen Somerset is the Somerset Council film office that supports, encourages and celebrates filming in the county, recognising the economic and wider benefits that it can bring. If you’re interested in filming in Somerset we would be delighted to help. Please email filming@somerset.gov.uk.
More information
- For details of Hot Fuzz tours visit wellswalkingtours.co.uk
- For Wells visitor information visit wellssomerset.com
- For information about Wells Cathedral wellscathedral.org.uk
- For information about The Bishops Palace visit bishopspalace.org.uk
