10 Messages

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330 Points

Saturday, March 21st, 2026

In Progress

Films With Dark Backgrounds

Hi,

Why do films like Frankenstein (2025), Sinners, Superman (2025), The Fantastic Four - First Step have a black background and coloured text across the whole of their page?

I've seen it mentioned it's possibly due to sponsorship or mobile related, but I can't see any reason why anyone would want this non-standard, difficult to read appearance. Advertisements at the top of the page I can understand, but not this.

It's quite frustrating to land on one of these pages and think that something has gone wrong with either imdb or one's browser.

Thanks

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Employee

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79 Messages

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826 Points

2 months ago

Hello @hanksrw,

Sorry to hear that you are experiencing this. To better understand the issue, can you share a photo or screenshot of the pages?

Thanks in advance.

10 Messages

 • 

330 Points

Sorry, I missed your email as it went to junk.

I've done some more testing today (I'm logged in to my imdb account on all machines. Machines are windows 10 and using latest Chrome). Below are the colours (background/text) shown:

                                 Machine 1            Machine 2        Machine 2 (with US VPN)   Machine 3

Frankenstein             Black/Red             Black/Red        Black/Red                            Black/Red

Sinners                      Black/Blue            Black/Blue       White/Blue                          Black/Blue

Thunderbolts            White/Blue           White/Blue      Black/Yellow                        White/Blue

Fantastic Four: FS      White/Blue           White/Blue      Black/Blue                          Black/Blue

Project Hail Mary      Black/Blue            Black/Blue        Black/Orange                     Black/Blue

Just before I started this testing Sinners was at one point White/Blue on Machine 1. Also for Machine 2 (with US VPN) I decided to clear Chrome's cache and Sinners and Project Hail Mary then became White background after that. Project Hail Mary is now back to Black/Orange (!) after I've been back to that page again. Now when i go to Machine 1 and go to Fantastic Four: First Steps, it has reverted to Black/Blue again!!!

On machines 1 & 2 I have Windows dark mode enabled so I set Machine 3 to Light mode wondering if it would make the pages white. It didn't. Chrome appears to use my 'Device' mode. Either way, whatever my settings, that doesn't explain the constantly changing page themes that I am seeing as I go back and forth between different film titles.

Are the pages meant to render differently whether viewed in the UK or US? NB. this is not just a VPN issue as I am seeing changing page colours even just on my UK machine. Can you tell me what the colour schemes should be for these pages, and whether they will all change to White/Blue over time?

I've included two images below for Sinners to show the different colour schemes for that film that I am seeing. But in theory you should be able to see the others easily yourself. I can't believe this is just affecting my account/computers.

    

Employee

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79 Messages

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826 Points

Hello @hanksrw​,

Thank you for providing all these details. I've forwarded this information to our technical team for further investigation, ticket reference. We will email you back when we receive an update on this.

Thank you in advance for your patience.