Are film directors getting older?

Kane Parsons has just become the youngest person to direct a film that reached number 1 at the US box office with his smash hit Backrooms. Rather than celebrate this achievement, some have decided that it’s just not possible and have built a fringe conspiracy theory that he did not actually direct the film. What a world we live in, eh?Kane himself seems amused by the patently false rumour, and commented on it exactly how you might expect a 20-year-old to - via a pinned YouTube comment in which he said:This is actually all true. They don’t tell you this, but 96% of all movies released in North America and Europe are actually directed by the same person. They call him ‘The Older Gentleman’. He has had all of Hollywood in a chokehold for decades now.I looked at the directors’ ages behind 4,690 credits to see how old they were when their movie was released.Rather than looking at all movies made, I focused on those with at least 50k votes on IMDb. This enables meaningful coverage (many…