🌅 Most Top Films Are Led by “Nepo Babies”

SOURCE

Stephen Follows (2026)

WHAT TO KNOW

• Film industry data analyst Stephen Follows recently analyzed the 100 top-grossing films of each year from 2000 to 2025 (2,600 films in total), finding 70% had at least one so-called “nepo baby” as part of the core creative team (i.e., the director, credited writers, and top three billed actors). Of the 6,921 people included in the analysis, about a quarter had a family member already in the TV or film industry before they joined (28% of top-billed actors, 26% of directors, and 18% of writers). Follows recently presented the data at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland.

WHY IT MATTERS

• Follows found that while family ties indeed help people break into the industry, they’re not a guarantee of long-term success. While connected directors tend to get their first film made at a younger age (median age of 33 against 35 for everyone else), reach the 100 top-grossing films faster (median of 8 years from first feature against 10 years for everyone else), and get more second chances (72% go on to make a second feature compared to 66% of all other directors), the films they make also tend to bring in less money (median adjusted domestic gross of $84 million compared to $87 million for everyone else) and have similar IMDb ratings (average of 6.5 for both connected and non-connected directors). According to Follows, rather than certain success, family connections in Hollywood “get you a modest start earlier, keep you in the game longer, and buy you another roll of the dice when a film disappoints.”

CONNECT THE DOTS

• Hollywood’s “nepo baby” conversation has picked up steam in recent years, particularly after New York magazine dubbed 2022 the “Year of the Nepo Baby” in a collection of widely read articles. That said, nepotism in Hollywood is far from new. As Follows outlines in his analysis, Universal founder Carl Laemmle reportedly had some 70 relatives on his company’s payroll, while the Barrymore acting dynasty started decades before the emergence of talkies (another famous dynasty, the Fondas, began during Hollywood’s Golden Age). Today, Hollywood today is grappling with the reality of another class of nepo babies beyond creatives: studio heads.