Report: Hollywood's future is reflected in today's Academy Awards nominees and a changing America

 

The success of movies of Oscar nominees Minari and Judas and the Black Messiah with their diverse casts are making money and should make Hollywood decision-makers to rethink old beliefs in casting and subject matter that historically favored white actors and white perspectives, according to the annual diversity report from UCLA.

Looking at the relative plethora nominations for the Academy Awards that airs Sunday, one might get the impression that the movie industry had solved its diversity problem with the inclusion of so many actors and directors of color and films with themes outside of the usual white perspective. But like much of Hollywood, that's an illusion, says UCLA’s latest Hollywood Diversity Report, published Thursday, April 22, by the UCLA College Division of Social Sciences.

If the UCLA report and the diversity of the Oscar nominations is any indication, Hollywood may be experiencing what the rest of the country is grappling with the changing demographic trends that predict Whites will no longer be in the majority by mid-century.

"People of color and women made tremendous strides among film leads since the last report, cementing 2020 as a watershed moment for diversity in this important employment arena," the report said.

Films featuring actors of POC or projects with POC directors and producers may be reaping more of the industry plaudits, but a closer look shows those productions also getting smaller budgets and less studio backing than films with the big-name actors, directors and production companies.

The Hollywood Diversity Report tracks how well women and minorities are represented in four key industry employment categories: lead actors, total cast, writers and directors.

All four job categories showed progress in 2020, but women and people of color are still underrepresented in critical behind-the-camera jobs. Women made up just 26% of film writers and just 20.5% of directors. Combined, minority groups were slightly better represented as directors at 25.4%. Just 25.9% of film writers in 2020 were people of color.

“We’ve been systematically looking at these key job categories and comparing the representation of women and people of color to the all-important bottom line for eight years, and it’s encouraging to see skyrocketing numbers this year in front of the camera,” said Darnell Hunt, dean of the UCLA College Division of Social Sciences and the report’s co-author. 

UCLA’s Hollywood Diversity Report is the only study of its kind to incorporate analysis of how top films perform among different racial groups, comparing the diversity of casts, directors and writers with the diversity of American audiences.

For streaming platforms, films featuring casts that were 21% to 30% minority had the highest ratings among white, Black, Latino and Asian households and viewers 18–49.

Among the top 10 streaming films ranked by Asian and Black households, seven had casts that were more than 30% minority. Among the top 10 films ranked by Latino and white households, six had casts that were more than 30% minority.

UCLA’s report shows great progress in actor categories over its decade of data. In 2011, the first year tracked, more than half of the films fell into the lowest level of cast diversity — less than 11%. In 2020, however, 28.8% of films had the highest level of cast diversity — 50% or higher. Just under 10% of films in 2020 fell into the lowest level of cast diversity.

For the first time since the report launched in 2014, people of color were represented in the lead actor and total cast categories at levels proportionate to their presence in the American populace — 39.7% and 42%, respectively. People of color make up 40.3% of the U.S. population.

The analysis of 2020 films also looked at the correlation between directors’ and casts’ racial and gender diversity.

In 2020, nearly all of the films with a female director also featured a female lead (94.7%). Films directed by minorities had the highest level of cast diversity. And 78.3% of films directed by people of color featured minority leads.

However, the report notes, there are still relatively few examples of women and people of color running the show on big-budget films, those marketed to the broadest audience.

“Our report finds that women directors and directors of color have overwhelmingly diverse productions,” said Ana-Christina Ramon, the report’s co-author and the director of research and civic engagement for the division of social sciences. 

“However, these films often have smaller budgets than those helmed by male directors and white directors. So, in a year where more diverse productions were made more accessible to larger audiences through streaming services, the contrast is stark as to what types of films have the big budgets. There is a clear underinvestment of films made by, written by, and led by women and people of color.”

White film directors were more than twice as likely as minority directors to helm a film with a budget of $100 million or more — 6.4% versus 2.8%. Men and women were equally likely to direct a big-budget film in 2020 — 5.7% and 5.6%, respectively.

Women and people of color were more likely to direct films that fell into the lowest budget category of less than $20 million. For films directed by people of color, 72.3% had budgets less than $20 million, compared to 60% for white directors. It was about the same for films directed by women. Of those, 74.3% had budgets that were less than $20 million, compared to 59.2% for directors who were men.

Along those same lines, films with minority leads and writers of color also trended toward lower budgets, the report found.

Every industry felt the weight of the pandemic in 2020, and Hollywood was no exception. Business shutdowns and physical distancing efforts around the world wreaked havoc on box-office revenue and upended long-held film release strategies.

The report also looked at today's audiences. The global home and mobile entertainment market increased to a record $68 billion over the course of 2020, up 23% from the $55.9 billion in 2019. The U.S. share of this global market stood at nearly 44% in 2020. Latino and Black adults, in particular, consumed online content at higher levels than other groups.

The report found films with casts that were from 41-50% minority communities enjoyed the highest box office success around the world. Movies with less than 11% minority representation were among the poorest performers.

People of color also drove sales at the box office, accounting “for the majority of opening weekend, domestic ticket sales for six of the top 10 films released in theaters.”

Similarly, because the pandemic forced an inordinate amount of online streaming, the report found, “Households of color accounted for a disproportionate share of the households viewing eight of the top 10 films released via streaming platforms in 2020.”

The findings suggest that Hollywood studio executives can no longer rely on "gut" instincts based on embedded racial biases and should rely more on metrics that show that movies with diverse casts and subject matter can successfully cross over to an audience that is growing more diverse and want films that reflect the world around them.

Among other findings in the report:

• Women made up 47.8% of lead actors and 41.3% of overall casts in the top films of 2020. Women make up about half the U.S. population.

• Among white, Black and Middle Eastern or Northern African actors, women were significantly underrepresented in the top films of 2020, compared to men from those groups.

• Among Latino, Asian, multiracial and Native actors, women either approached parity with their male counterparts or exceeded it in films of 2020.

• The most underrepresented groups in all job categories, relative to their presence in the U.S., are Latino, Asian and Native actors, directors and writers.

The current report includes 10 years of data, making UCLA’s Hollywood Diversity Report the longest-running, consistent analysis of gender and racial diversity in the film industry. TV industry data, part two of the now biannual report, will be released in September 2021.