IMDB is in need of a truly better interface and we all know they won't change a thing. The search feature is not all that great either, in fact it sucks. By the way finding a good movie online and its related information is very very painful.
This is totally true, but IMDB has some serious network effects that you'd need to overcome. Their biggest asset is the huge database they've already built up; any competitor would need to recreate that. And they build it from user contributions: users already go to IMDB, so for a startup to rebuild it, they'd need to attract those users, which requires offering better content than IMDB. Catch-22.
It's much like E-bay: everybody knows they suck, everyone wants a competitor, but the network effects are so huge that a frontal assault is doomed to fail.
It probably wouldn't be a good idea, without massive amounts of resources (i.e Jason-Calacanis-mahalo-style), to try to recreate the data. Creating mashups with their data seems more reasonable. But can you build a startup out of it?
IMDB definitely sucks - actually I was sure that the herd had already moved on to something better, and was only too lazy too look around for it yet.
What are most people using these days? Steve Jobs showed "rotten tomatoes" in his iTunes-Video presentation, maybe that is where everybody is heading these days?
I still use IMDB but only for "who was that guy in that movie" situations. Don't really use anything for movie recommendations. Blockbuster.com gives horrible recs (I use their total access service) and I haven't found anything else worth mentioning. Seems like an accessible space if there are a lot of marketing dollars at hand.
It's much like E-bay: everybody knows they suck, everyone wants a competitor, but the network effects are so huge that a frontal assault is doomed to fail.