The Movie Database Support
Support → API Support
Popularity Value - TMDB V3's Discover Query Has Become Significantly Worse Recently
posted by ADrunkPotatoSTAFFMOD on сакавік 16, 2025 at 2:23 PM
https://developer.themoviedb.org/reference/discover-movie
My app uses the discover query with a few filters, and it was working extremely well, with highly popular movies filling my application's feed. However, the movies getting returned are all of a sudden relatively obscure and the filters are being ignored. Release date constraints no longer work and language/region constraints are also ignored. The request URLs in my app's code stayed the same when this regression occurred and I double checked if TMDB suddenly altered their format and that doesn't seem to be the case. Any help would be appreciated! If this is already a known issue and it's being worked on, then I apologize!
Reply by ADrunkPotato
on сакавік 16, 2025 at 2:30 PM
Upon further inspection, it appears to just be an uptick in random movies with strangely inflated popularity scores for this month. Having my query ignore this month seems to return better results.
Reply by superboy97
on сакавік 16, 2025 at 2:37 PM
If you want help about the API, you need to give us the complete query you have sent to us, as well as the complete answer you have received.
Reply by benporterfield
on сакавік 16, 2025 at 4:14 PM
I've also seen this, and I believe it's related to popularity scores suddenly changing drastically (as I've noted here: https://www.themoviedb.org/talk/67d4b3b431678cc3f8010ade)
Prior, most well-known movies had popularity numbers >90 or so. It now seems as though all the numbers have been suppressed significantly. For ex, fight club had a popularity of >100 in feburary, and now is at a 5.
If popularity numbers aren't calculating correctly, that would likely impact the /discover endpoint
Reply by ticao2 🇧🇷 pt-BR
on сакавік 16, 2025 at 5:56 PM
I just verified today, 2025-03-16, ID 550, Fight Club (1999).
I found this value of popularity.
"Popularity": 6,557
In 2023-05-15 the value was:
"Popularity": 94,421
Yes, it looks like we have some bug.
Reply by ADrunkPotato
on сакавік 17, 2025 at 1:19 PM
Ah, that's good to know that there IS definitely some issue on TMDB's end. Do you know if this will be remedied at some point?
Reply by ticao2 🇧🇷 pt-BR
on сакавік 17, 2025 at 11:56 PM
I've already sent a message to admin Travis Bell.
I haven't had an answer yet.
Reply by Travis Bell
on сакавік 18, 2025 at 4:51 PM
I just started looking into this. Might be a day or two before I have it fixed.
Reply by ADrunkPotato
on сакавік 18, 2025 at 5:42 PM
I appreciate the quick response from you and the mods. Thank you!
Reply by Travis Bell
on сакавік 22, 2025 at 11:44 AM
FYI, I have posted an update about this here.