About Watch Order Planner
Last updated . Published by AUSSIE-AI LTD. How the order is decided
Watch Order Planner is a free set of watch-order planners for film and TV universes. Each planner lists every title with its release date and runtime, switches between release order and story order, and keeps your progress in your own browser. It is published by AUSSIE-AI LTD, a small UK company. It is an unofficial guide: no studio is involved, and nothing here is official.
Where the facts come from
Each planner stores only facts: a title's name, whether it is a film, series or special, its first US release date, its runtime, its number of episodes and its place in story order. Each fact comes from a public source that allows reuse:
- Wikidata, the free database run by the Wikimedia Foundation, released under CC0. Every title in our data carries its Wikidata item id, so anyone can check it.
- Wikipedia, each title's own article. We store the revision we read, and use its infobox for the US theatrical release date and the theatrical running time.
- TVmaze, for series. TVmaze publishes the runtime of every episode under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence. Our series totals add those runtimes up, and our compiled episode-runtime totals are shared under the same licence.
- Disney+, for Marvel's story order. Disney+ publishes a timeline order for its Marvel titles. We use it as recorded in Wikipedia's "Marvel Cinematic Universe timeline" article.
How the facts are checked
Every film's release date and runtime is read from Wikipedia and compared with Wikidata. Where they disagree, we use the Wikipedia figure, because that article cites the studio or a film classification board, and the planner page lists both figures under "How this list was made". For series, we check TVmaze's episode count against Wikipedia's and flag any episode whose length falls outside the range Wikipedia prints. Upcoming dates are checked against a second source as well.
How the order is decided
Release order is the date of first release in the United States: the cinema release for a film and the premiere for a series. When two titles share a date, they keep the order in which they were announced in our data.
Story order depends on the franchise:
- Marvel follows the Disney+ timeline order. A few titles are not on that timeline, such as the Sony-distributed Spider-Man: Brand New Day, animated series set in their own universe and anything not yet released. We place those ourselves and each one says "Story placement is our call" with the reason.
- X-Men has no official story order. Ours places each film in the year where most of it takes place, as stated in its Wikipedia plot summary, and each film shows how it was placed.
- Spider-Man films were released in story order within each run, so the two orders are the same.
What "essential" means
Essential is the one label that is our judgement rather than a fact, so each planner states its rule and every essential title shows its reason. For Marvel, a title is essential if it is an Avengers film, introduces a lead or main villain of the next Avengers film, ends by leading straight into one, or introduces a team or world named in the next Avengers film's published premise.
Upcoming titles
A title counts as upcoming until its release date, worked out from today's date in your browser. Upcoming titles are listed with their date and source, cannot be ticked, and are left out of every total. Nothing is ever called new before it is out. A runtime reported before release is shown as unconfirmed and is not counted.
What the site does not use
There are no posters, logos, stills, character art or studio wordmarks anywhere on the site, and nothing from the TMDB database. The colours and typeface are our own. Every one-line description was written for this site, is kept free of spoilers and does not copy any synopsis. Film and series titles are used only so you can identify them.
How the planner is tested
Before any change goes live, automated tests check the data (every title has a date, a runtime or a note explaining why not, and a source; story positions run without gaps), the totals, the hours left, the share links and the marathon calculator. A second program, written separately in Python, recomputes the totals and finish dates and has to agree. A browser test then clicks through every control on phone and desktop screen sizes, in light and dark mode.
Corrections
If a date, runtime or placement looks wrong, send the title, the figure you expected and where it comes from through the contact page. We check it against the sources before changing anything.
Who runs it
Watch Order Planner is published by AUSSIE-AI LTD, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 17193460). Questions, corrections and rights-holder requests go through the contact page or to hello@watchorderplanner.com.
Unofficial fan guide. Not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Marvel, Disney, Sony, 20th Century Studios or any other studio. All film and series titles and trademarks belong to their owners.