Movie Schema

TL;DR — Movie schema is code you add to a page about a film that labels the movie details for search engines — “this is the title,” “this is the director,” “this is the poster image,” “these are the ratings.” Done right, it makes the page eligible for Google’s movie carousel. Two things to know up front: that carousel only shows on mobile (there’s no desktop version), and a separate, older “Critic Review” ratings feature was retired — but Movie schema itself is still live and still worth doing.

What Movie schema is

When you look at a page about a film, you can tell the title from the director from the star rating just by reading. A search engine sees plain text and has to guess. Movie schema spells it out in code, using the shared schema.org vocabulary — it tags each piece of the page with what it actually is: the name (title), an image (the poster), the director, when it came out (dateCreated), and any aggregateRating.

It’s almost always written as JSON-LD — a small block of code that sits in the page without changing how the page looks.

Why it’s worth doing

The payoff is Google’s movie carousel: a browsable, swipeable row of movie cards (title, director, poster, ratings) that can appear on movie-related searches. The one thing to set your expectations on: it only appears on mobile. If you check on a desktop and don’t see it, that’s not a bug — there is no desktop equivalent.

The carousel is real and live, but it’s a narrow feature — less common and less prominent than the Recipe or Video rich results you may have seen. So it’s most worth the effort for sites that are genuinely about films: review sites, streaming services’ movie pages, and movie databases.

The two things you always need

To be eligible at all, Google requires just two properties:

• name — the movie’s title.
• image — a poster or still (a real image URL).

Then, to actually look like a movie carousel entry rather than a generic page, add the recommended ones:

• director — the director’s name.
• aggregateRating — an average star score (with a count of ratings).
• dateCreated — the release date.
• review — individual reviews, if you have them.

The thing most people get wrong

“Movie schema was deprecated.” It wasn’t. What confuses people is that Google did retire a different, related feature called Critic Review — a ratings layer that was also used by books, TV, and local businesses. Google removed that display in 2025. But the movie carousel is a separate feature and it’s still live. And Google was explicit that the old Critic Review markup is harmless to leave on your site — nothing was penalized, only the display went away. More on that in the Advanced tab.

Three more beginner traps:

• Valid markup ≠ guaranteed carousel. It makes you eligible; Google still decides whether to show it.
• A single Movie block, on its own, isn’t the carousel. Google wants that Movie data wrapped in a list of movies (ItemList) — more on the exact shape in the Advanced tab.
• Only mark up what’s really on the page — a real film, a real poster, real ratings.

Want the full version — the exact required/recommended split, what happened to Critic Review and why it doesn’t touch the carousel, who should implement this, and a clean JSON-LD example? Switch to the Advanced tab.

TL;DR — schema.org/Movie markup (usually JSON-LD) makes a film page eligible for Google’s movie carousel — but that carousel is mobile-only, with no desktop rich result at all. Google’s required properties are just image and name; recommended are aggregateRating, dateCreated, director, and review — and it’s director + aggregateRating that make an entry read as a movie rather than a generic CreativeWork. A standalone Movie object isn’t the carousel on its own, either — Google pairs it with ItemList markup (a summary page linking to detail pages, or one all-in-one page) to make the carousel eligible. The biggest myth to kill: Movie schema is not deprecated. A separate “Critic Review” ratings layer (shared with books, TV, and local businesses) was deprecated in 2025 — but the carousel survived, and Google explicitly said the old Critic Review markup is harmless to leave in place; only the display was removed, no penalty. Valid markup only earns eligibility; Google still decides whether to show the carousel. It’s a genuinely live feature, just a narrow one — worth it mainly for film review sites, streaming movie pages, and entertainment databases.

What Movie schema does — the mobile-only movie carousel

Most guides list Movie among “supported types” and move on, which buries the single fact you most need to plan around: the feature Movie schema powers, the movie carousel, is mobile-only. Google’s docs say it directly — “The movie carousel is only available on mobile devices.” There is no desktop equivalent, no desktop card, nothing. If you build and test expecting desktop parity, you’ll conclude the markup “isn’t working” when it’s doing exactly what it can.

The carousel itself is a browsable row of movie entries on mobile Search — title, director, poster image, ratings — that a user can swipe through. It’s a real, listed Google feature (Google’s own search-gallery page describes “Movie carousels with director information”), but it’s narrower and less prominent than Recipe or VideoObject. Set expectations accordingly.

One more scoping fact most guides skip: a standalone Movie object, on its own, is not the documented carousel implementation. Google’s Carousel structured data guide lists Movie as one of the types you combine with ItemList markup to become eligible for the host carousel. The Movie properties below are what populate each carousel entry — the surrounding ItemList is what tells Google “this page is a list of movies” in the first place. More on the two ways to structure that below.

Required and recommended properties

schema.org/Movie is a child of CreativeWork, so it inherits a lot of general properties — but Google’s requirements for the carousel are lean:

The two required fields (image, name) get you eligible; the recommended ones are what make an entry actually look and behave like a movie carousel card. director and aggregateRating are the differentiators — they’re what distinguish a movie entry from a generic CreativeWork, and they’re worth treating as effectively mandatory even though Google files them under “recommended.” A film page with just name and image is thin; one with director, release date, and a genuine aggregate rating is a real carousel candidate.

Two things the table doesn’t fully capture. First, the image has real shape requirements: Google’s docs say images “must have a high resolution and have a 6:9 aspect ratio,” and while Google can crop images that are close, ones that “largely deviate from this ratio aren’t eligible” — a random production still cropped to a square won’t qualify. Second, aggregateRating and review aren’t a free pass on format: Google explicitly points both back to the same Review snippet requirements used elsewhere on the site, so a rating that wouldn’t pass muster as a standalone review snippet doesn’t get a break just because it’s nested inside Movie.

What happened to Critic Review (and why it doesn’t touch the carousel)

Here’s the confusion I most want to clear up, because it gets mangled constantly. There were two distinct things in Movie’s orbit:

1. The movie carousel — the mobile-only browsable feature. Still live.
2. A separate Critic Review ratings layer — a way to mark up professional critic reviews and scores, shared across movies, TV, books, and local businesses. This was deprecated in 2025.

Google’s stated reasoning, per Search Engine Roundtable’s coverage of Google’s own announcement, was that after testing critic review markup with a group of site owners it found it wasn’t useful for the ecosystem at scale (relayed, paraphrased below in Quotes — I’m not quoting it as if fetched directly from a primary Google post). Two things matter about how Google handled the retirement:

• It removed only the display, not a penalty. Google’s relayed guidance was that the deprecation doesn’t affect other review features and that you can leave the markup on your site so search engines can still understand the page. There is no downside to existing Critic Review markup — it simply stops surfacing.
• It did not touch the movie carousel. The carousel is a separate feature and continued to work. Conflating the two into “Movie schema is dead” is wrong.

There’s a useful pattern here without over-editorializing: Google trimmed several narrow CreativeWork features across 2025 (Critic Review, and around the same window the Course Info type saw its dedicated doc redirect away). The related Critic Review doc URL now redirects to the general changelog — the same redirect pattern you see for retired features. But Movie’s core carousel survived while its adjacent review layer didn’t. Keep the two mental models separate: the carousel lives; the Critic Review display does not; existing Critic Review markup is harmless.

The two ways to build the surrounding ItemList

Since a lone Movie object isn’t the carousel by itself, you need ItemList structured data around it. Google documents two page patterns, and their ListItem payloads are genuinely different — mixing them up is an easy way to ship markup that validates but doesn’t carousel:

Whichever pattern you use, Google requires that every page you link to from the ItemList — the detail pages, in the first pattern — carries its own valid, type-specific structured data. A missing or broken Movie block on a linked detail page breaks carousel candidacy for that one entry, not the whole list.

Who should implement this

Because the carousel is narrow and mobile-only, this isn’t a universal “add-it-everywhere” recommendation. It earns its keep on:

• Film review sites — where director + genuine aggregate ratings are already the content.
• Streaming services’ movie detail pages — the per-title landing pages.
• Entertainment databases (IMDb-style) — where each film has a structured record.

If your site mentions a movie in passing inside an article, you don’t need Movie schema on that page — that’s an Article (or a general CreativeWork) with maybe a mentions/about link to the film, not a Movie page. Movie schema is for pages whose subject is a specific film.

Basic JSON-LD example

A minimal-but-real Movie entry — the two required fields plus the differentiating recommended ones:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Movie",
  "name": "The Midnight Archive",
  "image": "https://example.com/img/midnight-archive-poster.jpg",
  "dateCreated": "2025-10-17",
  "director": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Lena Ortiz"
  },
  "aggregateRating": {
    "@type": "AggregateRating",
    "ratingValue": "4.3",
    "ratingCount": "1284"
  }
}

This snippet is the Movie payload itself — for the carousel, it still needs to sit inside ItemList markup on either a summary page or an all-in-one page (see the two-pattern table above). Validate the finished markup with the Rich Results Test, and remember that a clean pass only means eligible — Google still decides whether to surface the carousel, and it only ever surfaces on mobile. For where Movie sits in the wider structured-data picture, see the broader Schema Markup and Structured Data hubs this article nests under; for the review side of things, the Review schema and AggregateRating schema siblings go deeper on the ratings themselves.

AI summary

A condensed take on the Advanced version:

• What it is: schema.org/Movie markup (usually JSON-LD) that labels a film page’s title, poster, director, release date, and ratings so it can qualify for Google’s movie carousel.
• Mobile-only — the key scoping fact: the movie carousel appears only on mobile devices. There is no desktop equivalent. Don’t build/test expecting desktop parity.
• Required vs. recommended: Google requires just image and name; recommends aggregateRating, dateCreated, director, and review. director + aggregateRating are the differentiators that make an entry read as a movie rather than a generic CreativeWork — treat them as effectively mandatory. image must be high-resolution and close to a 6:9 aspect ratio; aggregateRating and review follow the same Review snippet rules used elsewhere on the site.
• A standalone Movie object isn’t the carousel: Google combines Movie with ItemList markup to make a page eligible for the host carousel — either a summary page linking to detail pages (ListItem = position + url only) or a single all-in-one page (ListItem includes the full Movie fields inline). Every linked detail page needs its own valid Movie markup.
• Not deprecated (the key myth): Movie schema and the movie carousel are still live. A separate Critic Review ratings layer (shared with books, TV, local businesses) was deprecated in 2025 — but that’s a different feature.
• Critic Review specifics: Google removed only the display, not via a penalty. It said the deprecation doesn’t affect other review features and that existing Critic Review markup is harmless to leave in place. The related doc URL now redirects to the changelog (typical retired-feature pattern).
• Don’t conflate them: carousel = live; Critic Review display = gone; existing Critic Review markup = harmless. “Movie schema is dead” is false.
• Eligibility ≠ display: valid markup + indexed page + Google deciding it’s worth showing — and even then, mobile only.
• Who should do it: film review sites, streaming movie detail pages, entertainment databases. Not pages that merely mention a movie.

Official documentation

Primary-source documentation from the search engines.

Google — structured data

• Movie carousel (Movie) structured data — the authoritative reference: required (image, name) and recommended (aggregateRating, dateCreated, director, review) properties, the 6:9 image aspect-ratio requirement, and the mobile-only restriction.
• Carousel (ItemList) structured data — the wrapper Movie needs to become carousel-eligible: the two page patterns (summary + detail pages vs. all-in-one) and their differing ListItem payloads.
• Review snippet structured data — the rules aggregateRating and review inherit inside a Movie entry.
• Search gallery — Google’s catalog of supported features, which lists “Movie carousels with director information” as a genuine feature.
• Critic Review structured data — the deprecated, separate Critic Review layer; the URL now redirects to the general changelog, consistent with the feature being retired.
• Rich Results Test — validate the markup and check eligibility.

Bing / Microsoft

• Marking up your site with structured data — Bing’s general structured-data support (schema.org, JSON-LD recommended).

Quotes from the source

On-the-record statements. Where a source page exposes the text, the link is a deep link that jumps to the quoted passage.

Google docs — the mobile-only restriction (verified verbatim)

• “The movie carousel is only available on mobile devices.” Jump to quote

That single line is the most important scoping fact about this feature and is quoted here as an exact substring of Google’s live documentation.

Critic Review deprecation — relayed via Search Engine Roundtable, not directly fetched

The following are Google’s stated reasons for retiring the separate Critic Review layer, as relayed through Search Engine Roundtable’s coverage of Google’s announcement — I’m paraphrasing rather than quote-marking them as if fetched from a primary Google post:

• Google’s framing was that it had initially tested critic review markup with a group of site owners and ultimately found it wasn’t useful for the ecosystem at scale.
• Google also indicated the deprecation doesn’t affect other review features on Search, and that you can leave the markup on your site so search engines can still understand the page.

The practical takeaway from both: the Critic Review display went away, existing markup is harmless to leave in place, and none of this touches the still-live movie carousel.

Movie schema cheat sheet

Required (for eligibility)

name (title) + image (poster/still).

Recommended (what makes it a real movie card)

director · aggregateRating · dateCreated · review — director + aggregateRating are the differentiators.

The one restriction to plan around

Two catches beyond the property list

• Image shape: high resolution, close to a 6:9 aspect ratio — Google crops close deviations, rejects large ones.
• Wrapper required: a lone Movie object isn’t the carousel — wrap it in ItemList (summary + detail pages, or one all-in-one page).

Live vs. deprecated — don’t conflate

Fast facts

• Format: JSON-LD (recommended, most maintainable).
• Movie is a child of CreativeWork (inherits sameAs, url, genre, etc.).
• Valid markup = eligible, not guaranteed to show — and only on mobile.
• Good fit: film review sites, streaming movie pages, entertainment databases.
• Not for pages that merely mention a film — that’s Article/CreativeWork.

Should I implement Movie schema?

Work down the questions:

1. Is this page’s subject a specific film?

• No — it just mentions a movie inside a broader article → Movie schema isn’t the right fit. Use Article/CreativeWork, optionally with an about/mentions link to the film.
• Yes → continue.

2. Is it the kind of site the movie carousel actually serves?

• A film review site, a streaming service’s movie detail page, or an entertainment database → good candidate, continue.
• A general blog with one movie post → you can add it, but the payoff is small; weigh the effort.

3. Are you OK with a mobile-only outcome?

• Yes → proceed. Just internalize that any resulting carousel appears only on mobile Search — there is no desktop rich result, so don’t judge success by what you see on desktop.
• If you were counting on a desktop card → there isn’t one; reset the expectation.

4. Do you have the differentiating data?

• You have a real poster (image), title (name), director, and genuine aggregateRating → add all of them; director + aggregateRating are what make the entry read as a movie.
• You only have name + image → you’re technically eligible but thin; add director and a real rating before expecting much.

5. Before you ship:

• Wrap your Movie item(s) in ItemList markup — a summary page linking to detail pages, or one all-in-one page. A lone Movie block isn’t the carousel by itself.
• Validate with the Rich Results Test.
• Remember eligibility ≠ display — Google still decides, and only on mobile.
• If you have old Critic Review markup, you can leave it; it’s harmless, just no longer surfaced.

Rule of thumb: Movie schema is worth it when the page is a film and the site is genuinely in the movie space — otherwise the narrow, mobile-only carousel rarely justifies the work.

Movie schema myths and mistakes to avoid

Myth: “Movie schema gives me a desktop rich result.” False. The movie carousel is mobile-only per Google’s own docs — “The movie carousel is only available on mobile devices.” There is no desktop equivalent. Don’t build or judge the implementation against a desktop card that doesn’t exist.

Myth: “Critic Review schema still shows ratings in search.” False since its 2025 deprecation. Google removed the Critic Review display. The markup itself is harmless to leave in place — Google said the deprecation doesn’t affect other review features and you can leave the markup on your site — but it no longer surfaces anything.

Myth: “Movie schema is deprecated entirely.” False. The core movie carousel is still live. What was removed was the separate, adjacent Critic Review layer (shared with books, TV, and local businesses) — a different feature. Don’t collapse “the Critic Review display was retired” into “Movie schema is dead.”

Myth: “A standalone Movie JSON-LD block is all I need.” Not quite. Google’s carousel is documented as Movie combined with ItemList markup — either a summary page linking to detail pages, or a single all-in-one page. A page with just a Movie object and no surrounding list markup has the right ingredients but not the carousel wrapper Google’s guide asks for.

Myth: “Adding Movie schema guarantees the carousel.” It only makes the page eligible. The page must be indexed and Google’s systems must decide the carousel is worth showing — and even then, only on mobile. Valid ≠ displayed.

Mistake: marking up a page that merely mentions a film as a Movie. Movie schema is for pages whose subject is a specific film. An article that references a movie in passing is an Article/CreativeWork, not a Movie.

Mistake: shipping only name + image and expecting a rich card. Those two get you eligible, but director and a genuine aggregateRating are what make an entry read as a movie carousel card. Thin markup earns a thin result.

Mistake: ripping out old Critic Review markup in a panic. There’s no penalty for leaving it — Google explicitly said so. Removing it is fine too, but it’s not urgent cleanup; the display simply stopped.

Clean vs. thin Movie JSON-LD

A clean, carousel-ready snippet

The two required fields plus the recommended differentiators — a real poster, a director as a Person, a release date, and a genuine aggregate rating with a count:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Movie",
  "name": "The Midnight Archive",
  "image": "https://example.com/img/midnight-archive-poster.jpg",
  "dateCreated": "2025-10-17",
  "director": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Lena Ortiz"
  },
  "aggregateRating": {
    "@type": "AggregateRating",
    "ratingValue": "4.3",
    "ratingCount": "1284"
  },
  "review": {
    "@type": "Review",
    "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Jordan Vega" },
    "reviewRating": {
      "@type": "Rating",
      "ratingValue": "4",
      "bestRating": "5"
    }
  }
}

The same page, too thin to earn much

Technically eligible, but nothing that makes it read as a movie:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Movie",
  "name": "The Midnight Archive",
  "image": "https://example.com/img/midnight-archive-poster.jpg"
}

What’s missing:

• No director — one of the two properties that make a carousel entry look like a movie rather than a generic CreativeWork.
• No aggregateRating — the other differentiator; without a rating there’s nothing to display in the ratings slot.
• No dateCreated — the release date that helps Google (and users) disambiguate the film.
• No surrounding ItemList — both snippets above are still just a lone Movie object; see the wrapped example below for what actually makes a page carousel-eligible.

Wrapping Movie in an ItemList (summary-page pattern)

A hub page that briefly lists several movies and links out to a dedicated page per film uses a lightweight ListItem — just position and url. The full Movie data (like the clean example above) lives on each linked detail page, not here:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "ItemList",
  "itemListElement": [
    {
      "@type": "ListItem",
      "position": 1,
      "url": "https://example.com/movies/the-midnight-archive"
    },
    {
      "@type": "ListItem",
      "position": 2,
      "url": "https://example.com/movies/harbor-lights"
    }
  ]
}

Google requires that each linked page (the-midnight-archive, harbor-lights) carry its own valid Movie markup — a broken or missing Movie block on one detail page drops just that entry’s carousel candidacy.

What not to include

• Don’t add a Critic Review block expecting a ratings display — that layer was deprecated in 2025 and no longer surfaces. (Leaving existing Critic Review markup is harmless, but don’t add it for a display that’s gone.)
• Don’t add Movie schema to a page that only mentions the film — mark that page up as Article/CreativeWork instead.

Reality check

Test yourself: Movie Schema

Five quick questions on schema.org/Movie, the mobile-only carousel, the ItemList wrapper it needs, and the Critic Review deprecation. Pick an answer for each, then check.

Resources worth your time

My writing on this topic

I haven’t published a standalone Movie schema guide of my own — so rather than point you at something that doesn’t exist, the honest move is to send you to the primary sources below and to the related structured-data work on this site. For the broader vocabulary and where Movie fits, see the Schema Markup and Structured Data hubs; for the AI angle, Schema Markup for AI.

From around the industry

• Movie carousel (Movie) structured data (Google Search Central) — the authoritative reference for required/recommended properties and the mobile-only restriction.
• Search gallery (Google) — confirms “Movie carousels with director information” as a genuine listed feature.
• Critic Review structured data (Google) — the deprecated, separate layer; the URL now redirects to the changelog.
• Search Engine Roundtable’s coverage of Google’s Critic Review deprecation — the relayed source for Google’s stated reasoning (“wasn’t useful for the ecosystem at scale”) and the “leave the markup in place” guidance.

A note on the coverage gap this fills: the popular schema plugins under-serve two facts that matter most here. Yoast lists Movie among covered types but doesn’t flag the mobile-only restriction — so implementers walk away expecting a desktop card that doesn’t exist. AIOSEO omits Movie from its roundup entirely, and neither plugin’s docs clearly separate the still-live carousel from the deprecated Critic Review layer. Both gaps are exactly what this article is here to close: the carousel is mobile-only, and Critic Review is a separate, retired feature — not evidence that Movie schema itself is dead.

Movie Schema

Movie schema (schema.org/Movie) powers Google's mobile-only movie carousel — title, director, image, and ratings on mobile Search. There's no desktop equivalent, the markup needs an ItemList wrapper to become carousel-eligible, and the separate 'Critic Review' ratings layer was deprecated, though Google says leaving that markup in place is harmless.

Related: Schema Markup, Structured Data, Book Schema, Review Schema

Movie Schema

Movie schema is the schema.org/Movie structured-data type used to describe a film — its title (name), image, director, dateCreated, and (via aggregateRating/review) ratings. It’s a child of CreativeWork, so it also inherits sameAs, url, genre, and other Thing-level properties. Google requires image and name; it recommends aggregateRating, dateCreated, director, and review. A standalone Movie object isn’t the carousel by itself — Google documents it combined with ItemList markup (a summary page linking to detail pages, or one all-in-one page).

The single most important scoping fact: the Google feature this markup powers — the movie carousel — is mobile-only. Google’s docs state it plainly: “The movie carousel is only available on mobile devices.” There is no desktop rich result equivalent. The carousel shows browsable movie entries (title, director, image, ratings) on mobile Search, and director plus aggregateRating are what distinguish a carousel entry from a generic CreativeWork.

Don’t conflate two separate things. The movie carousel is still live. A distinct, related Critic Review ratings layer — shared with books, TV, and local businesses — was deprecated in 2025; Google said it “wasn’t useful for the ecosystem at scale,” removed the display, and explicitly noted the underlying markup is harmless to leave on a site (no penalty). So “Movie schema is deprecated” is a myth: only the adjacent Critic Review display went away, not the core carousel. Good fit for film review sites, streaming platforms’ movie detail pages, and entertainment databases. Bing reads schema.org/Movie as ordinary entity data with no dedicated movie rich result.

Related: Schema Markup, Structured Data, Book Schema, Review Schema

Changelog