It’s been more than five years since the rise of the Me Too movement and nearly three since the racial reckoning that followed the killing of George Floyd, both of which prompted Hollywood leaders to promise systemic change. Yet in 2022, the percentage of women and people of color directing the biggest films at the US box office fell from previous highs in recent years, according to a study released Monday, one of many signs that promises would could have been largely symbolic. .
In 2022, just 9 percent of filmmakers behind the year’s top 100 fiction films were women and 20.7 percent were people of color, according to the University of Southern California Annenberg’s Inclusion Initiative. Both numbers are well below proportional representation in the United States
Now in its 16th year, the group’s annual report, “Inclusion in the Director’s Chair,” examines the number of women and people of color leading the top 100 films at the box office. Among the most startling findings: From 2007 to 2022, only 21 of the top-grossing films (out of a total of 1,488) were directed by women of color.
“Many people have traditions when they look back at the past year and the year ahead,” Stacy L. Smith, who founded the group, said in a statement. “At the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, it seems to be our tradition to lament how little has changed for women and people of color behind the camera in mainstream films. We would like to see not only the tradition change, but the hiring practices that continue to marginalize women and people of color as directors.”
In 2022, the percentage of women directing major theatrical releases fell from a record 15% in 2020. Overall, progress appears to have stalled, with the percentage typically hovering around 10% since 2019, according to the group’s data .
In other words, you can easily list the women who directed the major theatrical releases of 2022, since there were only 10: Olivia Newman (“Where the Crawdads Sing”), Gina Prince-Bythewood (“The Woman King”), Olivia Wilde ( “Don’t Worry Darling”), Jessica M. Thompson (“The Invitation”), Kat Coiro (“Marry Me”), Rosalind Ross (“Father Stu”), Halina Reijn (“Bodies Bodies Bodies”), Kasi Lemmons ( “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody”), Chinonye Chukwu (“Till”) and Maria Schrader (“She Said”). Only three were black women: Prince-Bythewood, Lemmons and Chukwu. (The studio did not include films that went straight to streaming platforms or those released in limited theaters in December.)
In recent years, Smith and her team have highlighted the lack of upward mobility of women and people of color in filmmaking by examining the demographics of people directing episodic television, independent films competing at the Sundance Film Festival, and theatrical releases with the biggest gains. They documented a steep decline in women and black directors moving into film’s highest arenas.
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Additionally, women and people of color are less likely to be hired multiple times to direct major motion pictures than their white male counterparts. A few women or people of color, and especially a few black women, repeatedly appear on the lists of the highest-grossing films at the box office every year. According to the study, you can count on one hand the number of black women who have directed more than one blockbuster in the last 16 years: Prince-Bythewood, Lemmons, Ava DuVernay, Jennifer Yuh Nelson and Stella Meghie.
“In many of the years we have provided this data, there has been little or incremental change,” Smith and his team wrote in the report. “The explanation for the lack of progress is simple: too few women and people of color are being hired for high-level jobs. Ultimately, the solution is also simple: hire more women and people of color to direct the best films. Despite the simplicity of the solution, change remains elusive.
Read the full study here.
