🎬 IMDb Top Lists → Sonarr & Radarr

Automated daily generation of popular IMDb TV shows (Sonarr) and movies (Radarr) as JSON import lists.

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✨ What This Does

This repository automatically generates and updates JSON lists of popular content from IMDb:

Content Type	Output Files	Use With
📺 TV Shows	top_tvshows_5.json, top_tvshows_10.json, top_tvshows_25.json	Sonarr
🎥 Movies	top_movies_5.json, top_movies_10.json, top_movies_25.json	Radarr

Key Features:

• 🔄 Daily automation - GitHub Actions updates lists every day at 03:00 UTC
• 🎬 Bollywood excluded - Movies list automatically filters Indian cinema
• 🔍 TVDB resolution - TV shows include TVDB IDs for Sonarr compatibility
• 🚀 Playwright-powered - Bypasses IMDb's anti-bot protection
• 📦 Zero maintenance - Works automatically once set up

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📋 Output Format

TV Shows (Sonarr)

[
  {"title": "One Piece", "tvdbId": 392276},
  {"title": "The Pitt", "tvdbId": 448176},
  {"title": "Invincible", "tvdbId": 368207}
]

Movies (Radarr)

[
  {"title": "Project Hail Mary", "imdbId": "tt12042730"},
  {"title": "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie", "imdbId": "tt28650488"}
]

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🚀 Quick Start

Import to Sonarr

1. Open Sonarr → Settings → Import Lists
2. Click + → Custom
3. Set:
   • List Name: IMDb Top TV Shows
   • List URL: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FelixClements/imdb-top-lists/main/top_tvshows_25.json
4. Save and enable

Import to Radarr

1. Open Radarr → Settings → Import Lists
2. Click + → Custom
3. Set:
   • List Name: IMDb Top Movies
   • List URL: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FelixClements/imdb-top-lists/main/top_movies_25.json
4. Save and enable

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🛠️ Local Usage

Prerequisites

• Python 3.9+
• pip

Installation

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/FelixClements/imdb-top-lists.git
cd imdb-top-lists

# Create virtual environment
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate  # Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate

# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Install Playwright browsers
playwright install chromium --with-deps

# Run the scrapers
python generate_list.py      # TV shows → top_tvshows_25.json
python generate_movies.py   # Movies → top_movies_25.json

Custom Options

# Generate top 50 TV shows
python generate_list.py -n 50 -o top_tvshows_50.json

# Generate top 100 movies
python generate_movies.py -n 100 -o top_movies_100.json

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⚙️ Configuration

Parameter	Default	Description
-n, --number	25	Number of titles to fetch
-o, --output	top_tvshows_25.json / top_movies_25.json	Output filename
--user-agent	Chrome 140	Custom User-Agent header

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🎬 Bollywood Filtering

Movie list automatically excludes Indian cinema using IMDb URL parameters:

• countries=!in - Excludes India as country of origin
• languages=!hi - Excludes Hindi language films

This ensures a Western/international focus while respecting that Bollywood content has dedicated platforms.

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🔄 GitHub Actions Workflow

The workflow runs automatically every day at 03:00 UTC:

Jobs:
1. Checkout repository
2. Setup Python 3.11
3. Install dependencies
4. Install Playwright browsers
5. Generate TV show lists (5, 10, 25)
6. Generate movie lists (5, 10, 25)
7. Commit changes (if any)

Manual trigger: Go to Actions → Update IMDb Lists → Run workflow

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📊 How It Works

Architecture

┌─────────────────┐
│  GitHub Actions │
│  (Daily 03:00)  │
└────────┬────────┘
         │
         ▼
┌─────────────────┐
│  Playwright     │ ◄── Bypasses WAF protection
│  Chromium Browser│
└────────┬────────┘
         │
         ▼
┌─────────────────┐
│  IMDb Scraper   │ ◄── Scrapes popular TV/movies
└────────┬────────┘
         │
         ├──► TV Shows ──► TVMaze API ──► TVDB ID
         │
         └──► Movies (Bollywood filtered)
         │
         ▼
   JSON Files (committed to repo)
         │
         ▼
   Sonarr / Radarr import

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📈 Files Generated

File	Content	Source
top_tvshows_5.json	Top 5 TV shows	IMDb Popular TV
top_tvshows_10.json	Top 10 TV shows	IMDb Popular TV
top_tvshows_25.json	Top 25 TV shows	IMDb Popular TV
top_movies_5.json	Top 5 movies	IMDb Popular Movies
top_movies_10.json	Top 10 movies	IMDb Popular Movies
top_movies_25.json	Top 25 movies	IMDb Popular Movies

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🔧 Troubleshooting

Playwright Browser Issues

# Reinstall Playwright browsers
playwright install chromium --with-deps

No Items Scraped

The scraper includes retry logic (3 attempts) and increased timeouts for reliability. If issues persist:

1. Check internet connection
2. Verify IMDb URL is accessible
3. Check GitHub Actions logs for details

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🤝 Contributing

Contributions welcome! Feel free to:

• Report bugs via Issues
• Suggest features
• Submit pull requests

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📝 License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.

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📜 Changelog

2026-04-06

• Breaking: Renamed output files to top_tvshows_X.json and top_movies_X.json
• Added movie scraper for Radarr with Bollywood exclusion
• Fixed WAF blocking by switching to Playwright browser automation
• Improved timeouts for GitHub Actions reliability
• Added detailed logging for debugging

Historical

• Initial release: TV show scraper for Sonarr