Profanity On Film

Have you ever wondered which films are guilty of using the most expletives? Or which of your favourite actors curse the most on the big screen? You may be surprised by the results of our analysis of more than 3,500 movie scripts.

Objectives

1. Achieve top-tier, authoritative, editorially valid links that increase site authority.
2. Support and increase brand recognition efforts through coverage, social and print.

Methodology

Working with Buzz Bingo, our goal was to find the movies with the most swear words. We scraped a whopping 3,565 film scripts and cross-referenced them with lists of profanities, including those selected by an official Ofcom report. We could then rank films by the total number of swear words and swears per 1,000 words to find the most foul-mouthed film, plus the top actors and actresses and the top movie characters ranked by swear words uttered on film.

We also wanted to answer the question: has profanity in movies changed over time? We analysed the number of swear words spoken per 1,000 words in films released over the last eight decades to find out. We also looked especially at PG films to explore if the leniency around swear words in family-friendly films has evolved over time.

The resulting campaign was phenomenally successful and attracted lots of media attention, including from the biggest authority sites and a few A-listers! Jonah Hill launched the campaign into the viral stratosphere when he Instagrammed in response to his crown as the most foul-mouthed actor on screen, and Nicolas Cage references our study in his Netflix show ‘History of Swear Words’.

Proving the campaign's long-lasting impact, in March 2022, Jimmy Fallon surprised Samuel L. Jackson with his controversial third-place position in our ranking of the actors who have uttered the most swear words in movie history. Not only did the ranking include Buzz Bingo's logo, showing it off to the millions of viewers who tuned in, but the Snakes on a Plane star gave the best response we could have hoped for! Check out the clip below:

Results

• 31825

  LinkScore

• 871

  Linking domains

• 131

  Extra coverage

• 15.5m

  Est. Coverage views

• 76.6k

  Coverage shares

• 50+

  Countries covered

• 2*

  Celebrity shares

*Celebrity responses from A-listers including Jonah Hill (via Instagram) and Nicolas Cage on the Netflix show ‘History of Swear Words’. In March 2022, Samuel L. Jackson reacted to his position in our ranking on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

Coverage highlights

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View live campaign