Col Needham
Colin Needham is an English computer scientist who founded the Internet Movie Database. He was its chief executive officer from its creation in 1990 until 2025, when he stepped down and instead took a role as its executive chairman.
Early life
Needham was born on 26 January 1967 in Denton, Lancashire. He attended Audenshaw School and Clarendon Sixth Form College in Hyde, Cheshire, and graduated from the University of Leeds with a BSc (Hons) in computer science in 1988.Career
Needham started the Internet Movie Database in 1990 while working as an engineer at Hewlett-Packard in Bristol. The site evolved from what was initially his personal film database which became an online bulletin board made from simple records, kept on a succession of early computers and contributed to by several people, all of whom Needham outlasted.By 1996, with the success of IMDb's first film-related advertising campaign, Needham had quit HP to work on IMDb fully as a paid employee. In 1998, IMDb was acquired by Amazon. In 1999, Needham won two Webby Awards for IMDb.
In 2017, Needham removed message boards from IMDb, stating that they "are no longer providing a positive, useful experience for the vast majority of our more than 250 million monthly users worldwide". In 2025, he stepped down as the CEO of IMDb and handed over to Nikki Santoro, then shifted to the role of executive chairman.