🎬 TMDB Movies, TV Shows and People Scraper

🚀 Pull movies, TV shows, and people with cast, crew, trailer, watch providers, ratings, IMDB and Wikidata links across 12 modes.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-08 · 📊 46 fields per record · 12 modes · search, popular, top rated, now playing, upcoming, trending · cast + crew + trailer + keywords + watch providers · TMDB, IMDB, FB, IG, X IDs

The TMDB Movies, TV Shows and People Scraper pulls rich entertainment metadata for movies, TV series, and people from The Movie Database. Output includes title, poster, backdrop, overview, runtime, certification, genres, keywords, cast (top 20 with character + photo), directors, writers, producers, trailer URL, watch providers (flatrate / rent / buy + link), spoken languages, production companies + countries, budget, revenue, IMDB ID, Facebook / Instagram / X IDs, and per-record poster + backdrop galleries.

Twelve modes in one Actor: search movies, TV, people, multi-search, popular movies, popular TV, top-rated movies, top-rated TV, now playing, upcoming, trending day, and trending week. Detail enrichment runs automatically per record. The dataset draws from TMDB, the canonical open community-maintained movie database used by Plex, Emby, Jellyfin, Stremio and many more.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Streaming UIs, recommendation engines, journalists, fan apps, ML datasets, cinephile communities, content marketing teams	Movie + TV recommender training, content marketing, what-to-watch tools, retrospectives and best-of lists, analytics dashboards, ML embeddings

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📋 What the TMDB Movies, TV Shows and People Scraper does

Five filtering workflows in a single run:

• 🔍 Search modes. Movies, TV, people, multi (mixed media).
• 🔥 Browse modes. Popular, top-rated, now playing, upcoming.
• 📈 Trending. Day and week trending across all media types.
• 🎭 Cast + crew + trailer. Top 20 cast with photos, directors, writers, producers, YouTube trailer.
• 🎯 Watch providers. Flatrate, rent, and buy services per region.

💡 Why it matters: clean, server-side filtering and fresh data on every run.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon: a 3-minute walkthrough showing how to go from sign-up to a downloaded dataset.

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⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
maxItems	integer	10	Records to return. Free plan caps at 10, paid plan up to 1,000,000.
mode	string	"movie"	movie, tv, person, multi, popular_movies, popular_tv, top_rated_movies, top_rated_tv, now_playing, upcoming, trending_day, trending_week.
query	string	""	Search term (required for search modes).
year	integer	""	Filter movies by release year (search-movie mode).
language	string	"en-US"	BCP-47 locale code, controls language of all text.
tmdbApiKey	string	""	Optional: bring your own TMDB API key. Default uses public read key.

Example: search Christopher Nolan films.

{
    "maxItems": 20,
    "mode": "movie",
    "query": "Christopher Nolan"
}

Example: top 20 popular TV shows.

{
    "maxItems": 20,
    "mode": "popular_tv"
}

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📊 Output

Each record contains 46 fields. Download as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema

Field	Type	Example
🖼️ posterUrl	string	"https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w500/..."
🆔 tmdbId	number	550
🎭 mediaType	string	"movie"
📛 title	string	"Fight Club"
📛 originalTitle	string	"Fight Club"
📝 tagline	string	"Mischief. Mayhem. Soap."
📜 overview	string	"A ticking-time-bomb insomniac..."
📅 releaseDate	string	"1999-10-15"
⏱️ runtime	number	139
🔞 certification	string	"R"
🏷️ genres	array	["Drama","Thriller"]
🔑 keywords	array	["dual identity","insomnia"]
⭐ voteAverage	number	8.4
🗳️ voteCount	number	27500
🔥 popularity	number	45.2
🎭 directors	array	["David Fincher"]
🎬 cast	array of objects	[{"name":"Brad Pitt","character":"Tyler Durden","profileUrl":"...","order":0}]
📺 trailerUrl	string	"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUXWAEX2jlg"
📺 watchProvidersFlatrate	array	["Netflix","Hulu"]
🆔 imdbId	string	"tt0137523"
🆔 facebookId	string	null
🌐 tmdbUrl	string	"https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/550"

📦 Sample records

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✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
🎭	Real cast + crew. Top 20 cast with character, photo URL, and order; full director / writer / producer credits.
📺	Trailers automatic. First official YouTube trailer per title.
🌐	Watch providers. JustWatch-powered streaming availability per record.
🆔	Cross-platform IDs. TMDB + IMDB + Facebook + Instagram + X identifiers for joins.
🆓	No API key required. Uses TMDB's public read key by default. Bring your own for higher limits.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Filters	Setup
⭐ This Actor	$5 free credit	Movies, TV, people	Live per run	12 modes	⚡ 2 min
OMDb API (paid)	$1+/1k requests	Movies + TV	Live	Limited	🐢 Account
IMDB scraping	Free	All	Live	DIY	🐢 Days
TMDB direct	Free with key	All	Live	DIY pagination	🐢 Hours

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🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Find the TMDB Movies, TV Shows and People Scraper on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Pick filters and maxItems.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start.
5. 📥 Download. Grab results in the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

⏱️ Total time from signup to dataset: 3-5 minutes. No coding required.

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💼 Business use cases

🎬 Streaming + Media What-to-watch UIs with watch-provider data Movie / TV recommender training Editorial content (best-of lists) Cinephile newsletters and apps	📊 Analytics + ML Embedding training on overview + keywords Box-office vs rating analysis Genre clustering Cast-graph extraction
📰 Journalism + Content Movie reviews with rich metadata Award-season retrospectives Box-office trend pieces Director / actor filmography pages	🎨 Hobby + Side Projects Personal Letterboxd-style apps Family movie-night picker Watchlist managers Trivia generators

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🔌 Automating TMDB Movies, TV Shows and People Scraper

Control the scraper programmatically:

• 🟢 Node.js. Install the apify-client NPM package.
• 🐍 Python. Use the apify-client PyPI package.
• 📚 See the Apify API documentation for full details.

The Apify Schedules feature lets you trigger this Actor on any cron interval.

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

Data like this powers more than commercial workflows.

🎓 Research and academia Film studies datasets Reproducible movie-rating snapshots Network analysis on cast / crew Genre-temporal studies	🎨 Personal and creative Personal watchlist apps Movie-blog backbones Side projects with film data Trivia and quiz games
🤝 Non-profit and civic Library + museum cinema programs Community film clubs Free educational film catalogs Heritage cinema preservation	🧪 Experimentation Train cast-graph embeddings Prototype recommender systems Test conversational movie agents Build trailer-discovery tools

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🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Open a ready-to-send prompt in the AI of your choice:

• 💬 ChatGPT
• 🧠 Claude
• 🔍 Perplexity
• 🅒 Copilot

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🧩 How does it work?

Pick a mode (search or browse), supply a query if needed, and the Actor pulls results from TMDB. Each record is enriched with a detail call appending credits, videos, images, external IDs, keywords, release dates, and watch providers.

📊 How many fields per record?

46 for movies and TV (cast, crew, trailer, providers, IDs, galleries). Person mode returns 21 fields plus credits.

🎬 Does it return the full cast?

Top 20 cast members with character name, photo, and billing order. Full crew is summarized to directors / writers / producers.

📺 Are trailer URLs included?

Yes. The first official YouTube trailer per title (when available) is returned as a clean watch URL.

🌐 What about watch-provider data?

Yes. Flatrate (Netflix, Disney+, etc), rent, and buy lists per record, defaulting to US region.

🆔 Which external IDs are returned?

TMDB, IMDB, Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) for joining with other datasets.

🌍 Which language?

Default is en-US. Override via the language input (any TMDB-supported BCP-47 code).

🔁 Can I schedule runs?

Yes. Apify Schedules supports any cron interval.

⚖️ Is this data free to use?

TMDB is free for personal and non-commercial use. Commercial use requires attribution; consult TMDB's terms.

💳 Do I need a paid Apify plan?

No. The free plan covers preview runs (10 records). A paid plan unlocks higher item counts and scheduling.

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🔌 Integrate with any app

TMDB Movies, TV Shows and People Scraper connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Make - Automate multi-step workflows
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get run notifications
• Airbyte - Pipe data into your warehouse
• GitHub - Trigger runs from commits
• Google Drive - Export datasets to Sheets

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more reference-data scrapers.

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🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form to request a new scraper, propose a custom data project, or report an issue.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: this Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by The Movie Database (TMDB), JustWatch, IMDB, or any production studio or distributor. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available open data is collected.