DEI efforts across the entertainment industry have been increasingly under attack — from consumers, lawsuits and even federal policy. Despite the rollback of programs and discussion of DEI, a new study reveals that the perception of an inclusive Hollywood may be just as fictional as the content it sells.
The report is the latest from Stacy L. Smith and the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative and examines the 100 top-grossing films of 2024 as part of a longitudinal investigation that now spans 1,800 top films from 2007 to 2024. The report evaluates representation of gender, race/ethnicity, the LGBTQ+ community and people with disabilities on screen. Behind the camera, the study assesses gender and race/ethnicity of directors, writers, producers, composers, and casting directors.
The results demonstrate that on gender, films demonstrate progress and inertia. More than half of the most popular movies last year featured girls/women in lead/co-lead roles. This is a critical benchmark that merits recognition — in 2007 only 20 movies had a lead/co-lead who was female-identified. Yet, though there is progress for leading women, there has been little to no change for all speaking characters. In 2024, 33.6% of the 4,401 speaking characters evaluated were girls/women, a figure which has not changed significantly from 2007, when it was 29.9% or 2023 when it was 31.7%.
“While it’s encouraging to see that the film business can achieve gender parity on screen, reaching this benchmark for lead/co-lead characters is only the beginning,” said Smith. “Changing the ecosystem of content requires thinking about all the aspects of a story, not only who is at the center.”
Behind the camera, women made little progress in 2024 — 21.7% of directors, 12.9% of screenwriters, 27% of producers, and 8.4% of composers were women across popular movies last year. Since 2007, there have been increases in women’s participation behind the camera as directors (2.7%), producers (19.7%), and composers (0%). However, there was no increase from 2023 to 2024 for any of these behind-the-scenes roles. In other words, while the film industry has found ways to hire more women behind the camera after more than a decade of advocacy, their efforts have plateaued.
Though 41.6% of the U.S. population is from an underrepresented racial/ethnic group, slightly more than one-third (36.4%) of all speaking characters in the top films of 2024 were from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups. Only 1 specific racial/ethnic group has seen an increase in representation since 2007: Asian characters. This group increased from 3.4% of speaking characters in 2007 to 13.5% in 2024. Though this overall change is encouraging, the percentage of Asian characters declined from 2023 to 2024.
Along those lines, the percentage of white characters overall has decreased by 14 percentage points in the past 18 years. Even so, there were more white characters on screen in 2024 than 2023. The conclusion from these data points is that while 2024 is an improvement on representation across 18 years, it is also a sign that the progress made in that time is beginning to reverse.
This is also true for leads/co-leads from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups. A quarter of films in 2024 featured an underrepresented lead/co-lead. This is a meaningful increase from 2007 (13%) but again, falls significantly below the 37% of films in 2023 with leads of color. Only 14 movies in 2024 focused on girls/women of color in leading or co-leading roles and just one of those was a woman of color age 45 or older.
The same pattern continues behind the camera. In 2024, 23.2% of directors were from an underrepresented racial/ethnic group compared to 22.4% in 2023 and 12.5% in 2007. There were fewer Black directors in 2024 than 2023, while the numbers for Hispanic/Latino and Asian directors did not change. Once again, though there is meaningful change over 18 years, there is not consistent year-over-year progress when it comes to hiring behind the camera.
Looking to LGBTQ+ representation, less than 1% of all speaking characters in 2024 were part of this community. Overall, there has been stability in the presentation of LGBTQ+ characters since 2014, the first year this group was measured in the study. That stability translates to a substantial number of films without any LGBTQ+ speaking characters. In 2024, 82 films did not feature a single LGBTQ+ speaking character on screen — significantly higher than in 2023, when 76 movies were missing LGBTQ+ characters, and on par with the 86 films missing LGBTQ+ characters in 2014.
Only 2.4% of all speaking characters had a disability in 2024, far below the 27.7% of the U.S. population living with a disability, and identical to the percentage of characters in 2015 with a disability. There were 44 films that had no depictions of characters with disability, another finding that remained consistent over time. Roughly two-thirds (64.8%) of characters with a disability had a physical disability, while 32% had a communicative disability and 24% had a cognitive disability.
There was progress for leading/co-leading characters with a disability. In 2024, 20% of the top-grossing films evaluated had a lead or co-lead with a disability. This was a new high point for the study and exceeded the 8 films in 2023 and 10 films in 2015 centered on a leading character with a disability.
“The major areas of progress this year, for women and for characters with disabilities, occurred only for leading characters,” said Smith. “This suggests that the change is not driven by an authentic desire for inclusion and matched with strategies based in expertise. Instead, ad hoc decision-making is the reason for these increases. Until evidence- and theory-based strategies are implemented, progress will continue to be sporadic and uneven.”
The study also provides recommendations for change. It is the latest report from the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative and can be found here.