Latest news with #StacyL.Smith
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Women Direct Only 11% of Top-Grossing Films Globally, According to New Study From Annenberg Inclusion Initiative
Women comprise 11.6% of the directors of global films, according to a new study from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. The figure is among the indicators that women's participation in the film industry at a global level is changing, but still nowhere near equality. Dr. Stacy L. Smith shared results of the study on Monday during the University of Oxford Cultural Programme's Women in Film event. ('Bridgerton' breakout Simon Ashley, 'Surface' star Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Dr. Smith led the lineup at the daylong conference.) The report focuses on women's progress across four areas of interest: as global film directors across 11 countries, at film festivals across six countries, as award recipients (for directors, writers and producers at the Academy Awards, BAFTAs and César Awards) and as film executives (at studios, distributors and subsidiaries in the U.S., the U.K. and France). More from Variety 'Monte Cristo' Actor Pierre Niney on Starring as a Toxic Superstar Coach in 'Guru,' Studiocanal's Thriller Directed by Yann Gozlan (EXCLUSIVE) Koji Fukada Talks J-Pop Industry's 'No-Dating' Clauses in Cannes Premiere Title 'Love on Trial,' First Clip Unveiled (EXCLUSIVE) Fan Bingbing Starrer 'Mother Bhumi' Nabbed by Rediance Ahead of Cannes Market (EXCLUSIVE) The study examines feature-length, narrative films that earned $1 million at the global box office and originated in 11 countries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States). A total of 4,532 movies were assessed and the gender of 4,991 directors was evaluated. While no country was close to reaching the global population benchmark of 50%, the three countries with the highest percentage of women directors were Germany (18.7%), the United Kingdom (18.5%) and Australia (18.3%). The countries with the lowest percentage were India (4.9%), Japan (4.7%) and the Republic of Korea (9.1%). Women make up 11.3.% of the directors in the United States, which is on par with the average. The percentage of women of color in the director's chair (5.7% in 2024) has doubled in the last decade (2.5% in 2015), but the figure is still in the single digits. 'For several years, we have examined the prevalence of women directors of top-grossing movies,' Dr. Smith said in a press release. 'The results of this report demonstrate that there is still a steeper climb to the top leadership position in film for women no matter what country they work in. The encouraging finding across this analysis is that there has been change in some countries and particularly in the U.K.' As Dr. Smith notes, Canada, France, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the U.K. demonstrated increases over the past 10 years. The U.K. saw the largest growth in the last decade; in 2024, 32.3% of its directors were women — a 6.6% increase from 2023 (25.7%) and 24% higher than 2015 (8.3%). Comparably, in 2024, 16.2% of U.S. films were directed by women, which is double the figure from 2015 (8.5%). Unveiled just before the Cannes Film Festival begins on Tuesday, the report expands on research that Dr. Smith and Annenberg's Katherine Pieper presented in April at an event highlighting the achievements of the Kering Women in Motion program. (That report surveyed 3,240 narrative films made in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, the U.S. and the U.K. that grossed at least $1 million globally and the lineups at five top film festivals: Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Sundance and Toronto. The new study surveyed five more countries as well as the London Film Festival.) Across 10 years of programming at the six film fests, only 27.8% of narrative movies were directed by women. Sundance featured the highest percentage of women directors (34.7%), followed by Berlin (30.3%), Toronto (29.4%), London (25.9%), Cannes (21.6%) and Venice (20.5%). The study also breaks down the progress for women narrative directors at each festival by year, whether their films were shown in competition, a breakdown of representation by race/ethnicity and the prevalence of nonbinary directors. The study also assesses women's artistic recognition in the best film, director, original screenplay and adapted screenplay categories at the Academy Awards, BAFTAs and César Awards from 2015 to 2025 (11 years of nominations). Across all three awards bodies, women were most likely to be nominated in the best film category (26.7%), followed by original screenplay (24.1%) and adapted screenplay (22.5%). Only 14.8% of best director nominees were women (a gender ratio of 5.8 male directors nominated for every female). Finally, the study examined 1,367 executives across film companies in the U.S., U.K. and France. Overall, 56% of executives were male and 44% were female. Parity was achieved in France, where 50% of identified executives were female, compared to 46.6% in the U.K. and 42.9% in the U.S. The study further explored the rank of executives, finding that women were most prevalent in senior VP (52%) roles in the U.S., while women filled 54.3% of VP/head/director roles in the U.K. and 70% of president-level positions in France. Women executives of color made up less than one-quarter (24.4%) of the tally across all three countries. Sixteen women of color held C-Suite level roles in the U.S., four of whom were specifically responsible for content creation. 'Overall, the results reveal that women have found ways to showcase their storytelling talent in a variety of places — but that they are still underrepresented relative to men,' the study concludes. While the degree of this marginalization differs by country, film festival, award type and executive role, the authors note, women of color face the steepest challenges. 'Across the analyses reported here, opportunities for women from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups remain less robust and these women remain less recognized than white women,' the authors write. 'Our other work demonstrates that women of color often tell the most highly reviewed stories, so the continued exclusion of these storytellers reflects an ongoing industry bias that exists globally.' Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Opinion: Last year, Hollywood managed to create at least one level playing field
42-16-42. That may sound like ever more outlandish measurements for the Barbie doll that inspired 2023's top-grossing film, but it is in fact good news for real women in Hollywood in 2024: Last year — and for the first time in the decades it's been studied — the number of female protagonists in the 100 top-grossing films equaled the number of males. Forty-two films featured female protagonists, 16 featured female and male co-leads, and 42 featured male leads. The kicker: The top money-maker featured a cartoon hockey-playing girl turned "inside out" by puberty. Who would have guessed? Well, perhaps anyone in the 2023 'Barbie' audiences, which skewed far more heavily female than those deciding what films to make. The fans pushed it to No. 1 in a year when it was the lone female-driven movie in the top five. That's another difference in 2024: Female-centered 'Wicked' and 'Moana 2' were the third and fourth top-grossing movies despite late November releases. As with 'Inside Out 2,' their successes were propelled by female audiences. Read more: Disney's 'Moana 2' rolling toward history-making Thanksgiving weekend Perhaps it's time to reconsider the Hollywood-think that young men drive ticket sales? And to those who might object that 2024's most popular movies are not populated with real women characters but rather two cartoon girls and a pair of witches, the males rounding out the top five were two comic book characters and a Minion. American moviegoers, faced with the current reality, are opting for fantasy. 'We have always known that female-identified leads would make money,' Stacy L. Smith, founder of USC's Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, says. She is a co-author of one of two studies just released showing gender parity in lead roles for the year. In Smith's view, this new parity 'is not the result of an economic awakening but is due to a number of different constituencies and efforts — at advocacy groups, at studios, through DEI initiatives — to assert the need for equality on screen.' Also released in 2024: A 'Women in Film' set of Barbies that includes a director, a movie star, a studio executive and a cinematographer. That lineup is more hope than reality, unfortunately. Top-grossing "Inside Out 2" was female-written and directed, but women accounted for only 11% of the directors and 16% of the writers of last year's top 100 films, both statistics down by 3% compared with 2023. You read that right: Despite a woman being responsible for the most popular film of 2023, the bulk of 2024's female film protagonists were put in the directorial hands of men. Similarly, when it comes to this year's Oscars, half the 10 best picture nominees feature female leads, but only a single best-director nod went to a woman, and a mere four of the 21 writers nominated are female. Read more: Shocking Oscar snubs for 'Barbie's' Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie just prove the movie's point Does it matter who is behind the scenes if we're seeing women's stories on screen? It does. Overall, film females continue to be substantially younger than males, and they are far less likely to be portrayed as leaders, or even at work. 'Female characters are more likely to be identified in relation to males, whereas males are more likely … to be identified by what they do,' says the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film's Martha M. Lauzen, whose 2024 study results mirror Smith's. But in women-directed films, females tend to be portrayed less stereotypically and with more agency. When women are involved behind the scenes, female characters tend to speak and interrupt others more, both 'powerful language behaviors,' she says. Her study also finds that female-directed films employed women as editors, writers and cinematographers twice, four times and seven times more often, respectively, than exclusively male-directed films did. At the very top? The studio leading 2024's pivot toward female-centric films, with a full two-thirds of its movies (including 'Wicked') centered on girls and women, was Universal Pictures — led by Donna Langley. She credits this change in part to Universal's Global Talent Development & Inclusion department, started in 2017. Female-led films create a ripple effect. The set overall, says Langley, becomes 'this sort of friendly environment for women to work in.' Both Lauzen's and Smith's studies concentrate on Hollywood's top-grossing, theatrically released films, as they have for 23 years in Lauzen's case and 18 in Smith's. That methodology has its limits. As Lauzen notes, with only 100 films, small fluctuations alter the numbers dramatically, and the streaming world — which wasn't responsible for much creative content when either began studying gender in film — may look a little different in the numbers of men and women in various roles. Still, as Smith's report points out, the top-grossers shown in theaters 'reflect major studio releases and the agenda-setting films of the year.' They are a reasonable marker of who is getting hired and what roles they play. When that marker is graphed over the decades, the message is more ups and downs than an outright win for women. Nonetheless, 2024's 'measurements' — 42-16-42 — are a milestone. Equality on screen and behind the scenes in Hollywood may be elusive, but it's not impossible. Meg Waite Clayton is the author of nine novels about women in history. Her latest, "Typewriter Beach," about screenwriters and actors, will be published this summer. If it's in the news right now, the L.A. Times' Opinion section covers it. Sign up for our weekly opinion newsletter. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Arab Times
12-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Arab Times
Female protagonists reach parity with men in top-grossing films of 2024
NEW YORK, Feb 12, (AP): For the first time in recent history, the percentage of top-grossing films featuring female protagonists equaled the percentage of films with male protagonists, according to a pair of annual studies released Tuesday. Movies like "Wicked," "Inside Out 2" and "The Substance' lifted Hollywood's theatrical releases to gender parity in leading roles in 2024. Of the 100 top domestic-grossing films in 2024, 42% had female protagonists, and 42% had male protagonists, according to a report issued by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University. The USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which also released its annual study Tuesday, found that 54% of the top 100 films at the box office in 2024 featured girls and women as protagonists. That's a massive jump from just the year prior, when 30% of films featured women in lead roles. In 2007, when the USC annual study began, that figure was just 20%. "This is the first time we can say that gender equality has been reached in top-grossing films,' Stacy L. Smith, founder of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, said in a statement. "In 2024, three of the top five films had a girl or woman in a leading role, as did five of the top 10 films - including the number one film of the year, Disney's 'Inside Out 2,'" added Smith. "We have always known that female-identified leads would make money. This is not the result of an economic awakening but is due to a number of different constituencies and efforts - at advocacy groups, at studios, through DEI initiatives - to assert the need for equality on screen.' Other metrics suggested the gains in leading roles masked still-endemic disparity throughout Hollywood. The percentage of female characters in speaking roles increased from 35% to 37% in 2024, according to the San Diego State study. Major female characters rose from 38% in 2023 to 39% in 2024. "Films such as 'The Substance' pushed back hard against a culture that considers women disposable,' Martha Lauzen, director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, stated. "While the number of films with female protagonists rose to a historic high in 2024 after a dismally lean 2023, the percentages of women in the more stable categories of major and speaking roles reflected only minor gains.' Universal Studios, which is led by Donna Langley, was the studio with the best record for female representation. In 2024, 66.7% of Universal releases centered on girls and women, according to the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. Neither study captures the large number of films released directly on streaming platforms or films that fall outside the top 100 movies in theaters. But for decades, those top box-office films have offered a snapshot of a film industry that has long failed to come close to reflecting the demographics of American society. That remains the case for underrepresented racial or ethnic groups, who account for roughly 42% of the U.S. population. In the top 2024 films in 2024, 25% included an underrepresented lead or co-lead, according to Annenberg. In those 25 movies, the lead or co-leads were 38.% Black, 15.4% Asian or Asian American and 3.9% Hispanic. That was a substantial decrease from 2023, when 37 leads or co-leads were people of color. "The progress we saw for female-identified leads was not matched by the findings for underrepresented leads,' said Smith. "This downturn signifies a lack of investment in storytelling that reflects the audience as a whole. The reality is that audiences want to see stories about women and people of color - studios and filmmakers do not have to choose between the two.'
Reuters
11-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Reuters
Hollywood boosts female leads but lags in people of color, report finds
LOS ANGELES, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Out of the top 100 movies in 2024, more than half featured a story centered on a female actor as a lead or co-lead, the first time representation has been above the U.S. Census where girls and women comprise 50.5% of the population, a 2025 report from the University of Southern California found. However, representation fell for people of color in film, the report said. The USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative examined 1,800 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2024 and assessed the gender, race and ethnicity as well as the ages of the leading and co-leading actors for each movie. 'This is the first time we can say that gender equality has been reached in top-grossing films,' said Dr. Stacy L. Smith, founder of the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. "This is not the result of an economic awakening, but is due to a number of different constituencies and efforts - at advocacy groups, at studios, through DEI initiatives - to assert the need for equality on screen," Smith added. Films like"Wicked" with lead Cynthia Erivo, " Anora" with lead Mikey Madison and Anya Taylor-Joy in "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" set the stage for these gains in Hollywood gender equality. Out of the 100 top-grossing films of 2024, 54 featured a girl or woman in a lead or co-lead role, the USC report said. This reflects an increase from 2023, when only 30 movies featured a female-identified protagonist. Over half of the films distributed by Universal Pictures (66.7%), Warner Bros. Pictures (55.6%)and Lionsgate (54.5%) featured a female actor as the lead or co-lead of the story, the report found. About 40% or more of films were centered on a female lead or co-lead at Paramount Pictures (44.4%), Walt Disney Studios (40%) and Sony Pictures Entertainment (38.5%). However, leads and co-leads from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups have declined significantly, as only 25 of the top 100 films featured a lead of color in 2024, a decrease from 2023, when 37 leads or co-leads were people of color. A third of all Paramount Pictures films released in 2024 featured a lead or co-lead of color, with Lionsgate (27.3%) and Universal Pictures (26.7%) having similar demographics. Walt Disney Studios (20%), Sony Pictures Entertainment (15.4%) and Warner Bros. Pictures (11.1%) reflected even lower numbers. In 2024, no distributors reached proportional representation with the U.S. Census (41.6%). 'This downturn signifies a lack of investment in storytelling that reflects the audience as a whole,' Smith said. 'The reality is that audiences want to see stories about women and people of color — studios and filmmakers do not have to choose between the two,' she added. Thirteen films in 2024 had a woman of color lead or co-lead, which is similar to USC's 2023 report and higher than the 2007 report. 'While this year's findings mark a historic step towards proportional representation for women there is still work to be done for women of color,' said Katherine Neff, the study's lead author.
Yahoo
11-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Female Leads Finally Hit Parity With Men in Top-Grossing Films of 2024
For as many major films with male protagonists that were offered in 2024, an equal number featuring female protagonists was also offered — for the first time ever. According to USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative's latest report, which assesses gender, race/ethnicity and age of the leading and co-leading actors for each movie from the 1,800 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2024, female leads finally hit parity, at least as far as representation goes. Per the findings out Tuesday, of the 100 top-grossing films in 2024, 54 featured a girl or woman in a lead or co-lead role. This marks a significant jump up from 2023, where only 30 movies featured a female-identified protagonist. 'This is the first time we can say that gender equality has been reached in top-grossing films,' Dr. Stacy L. Smith, who leads the research brief, said. 'In 2024, three of the Top 5 films had a girl or woman in a leading role, as did five of the top 10 films — including the No. 1 film of the year, Disney's 'Inside Out 2.'' 'We have always known that female-identified leads would make money,' she continued. 'This is not the result of an economic awakening, but is due to a number of different constituencies and efforts — at advocacy groups, at studios, through DEI initiatives — to assert the need for equality on screen.' Universal Pictures notched the highest percentage of female leads and co-leads, coming in at 66.7%. They were followed by Warner Bros. Pictures at 55.6% and Lionsgate with 54.5%. Sony Pictures fared the worst, with just 38.5% of its films across the 100 top movies of last year featuring a female lead. You can read the full study and its findings, here. The post Female Leads Finally Hit Parity With Men in Top-Grossing Films of 2024 appeared first on TheWrap.
