At the Academy Awards earlier this month, a relatively small indie film with a predominantly Asian cast that became one of the surprise box office hits of 2022 won seven Oscars, including Best Picture and a historic Best Actress win for the legendary Michelle Yeoh.
Hollywood executives likely want to herald the success story of “Everything Everywhere All At Once” as another indicator of progress on diversity. But that progress is never guaranteed — and it’s up to them to make sure it’s not a blip.
In a time when many companies in Hollywood are making huge cuts, a new report is once again warning them that diversity in front of and behind the camera is essential to the industry’s survival. However, progress has been uneven at best, as documented by the Hollywood Diversity Report, released Thursday by UCLA scholars Ana-Christina Ramón and Darnell Hunt.
Now in its 10th year, the annual report has consistently found movies with more diverse casts perform better with audiences across the board, earn a bigger return on investment for their studios and distributors, and generate more buzz on social media compared to movies with predominantly white and male casts.
But as the title of this year’s report, “Exclusivity in Progress,” suggests, while progress has been made, it has not been consistent. Analyzing the race/ethnicity, gender and disability status of the actors, writers and directors of major theatrical and streaming movies in 2022, the researchers found that in nearly every job category, women and people of color remain underrepresented relative to the U.S. population.
They’re also still likely to receive inequitable economic opportunities compared to white men. For instance, when examining the lead actors of major films and what budgets they were allocated, “films with white male leads enjoyed the largest budgets of all,” the researchers found.
Similarly, when looking at who’s behind the camera, few women and especially few women of…
Read the full article here
