Dr. Stacy L. Smith and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative have released their latest “Inclusion in the Director’s Chair” report and it offers a rare piece of pandemic-era good news: the last couple years have seen a historic number of women directing top-grossing films. An analysis of the top 1,500 movies from 2007-2021, the study updated its previous methodology to account for COVID’s effects on the box office and entertainment business as a whole. “Across 1,542 directors and 15 years of top-grossing movies, 5.4% were women,” a press release announced. “The percentage of women directors reached 15% in 2020, an all-time high. The increase from 2018 to 2020 persisted into 2021, when the percentage of women directors was 12.7%.”
“This is the first sustained increase we have seen in the percentage of women directors since 2007,” Smith explained. “Even when we examined several different samples of top-grossing films to account for the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, the results held. This tells us that we are seeing a true increase in the percentage of women directors of top-grossing films, though there is still room for growth to match the 51% of women who comprise the U.S. population.”
Unfortunately, these strides — which, to be clear, are still a long way from parity — have not been enjoyed by women of color. While the number of directors from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups hit a new high of 27.3 percent last year, only three women of color released a top-grossing film in 2021: Chloe Zhao (“Eternals”), Liesl Tommy (“Respect”), and Nia DaCosta (“Candyman”). Women of color represent less than two percent of all top-grossing directors since 2007. “This is a total of only 18 top-grossing films directed by women of color and 15 individual women of color who worked on a top-grossing movie during the time frame,” the press release emphasizes.
“It’s clear from the data that the perception of a woman director in Hollywood is a white woman, while underrepresented means an underrepresented man,” Smith said. “Yet our analysis also shows that women of color receive the highest average and median Metacritic scores for their work, outperforming white men and women as well as men of color. It’s not the quality of work by women of color but ongoing biases and prejudices that impede progress.”
Some of these biases may be found at film studios themselves. “Inclusion in the Director’s Chair” includes an examination of the film slates of six major and two mini-major studios. Of the 913 directors featured in the analysis, 11.1% were women, 17.8% were underrepresented, and just three percent were women of color. “There is still not one year in which every studio has hired at least one woman director,” the source notes. “Moreover, 34 of 56 film slates did not feature even one woman of color director.”
Conversely, streaming platforms offer “a more promising picture” for women and underrepresented filmmakers. In 2020 and 2021, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and HBO Max original movies featured more women and POC directors than films that received a traditional theatrical release.
In order to address the racial gap among top film directors, Smith and the Inclusion Initiative have started the AI2 Accelerator, which will provide a $25,000 scholarship to a woman of color so she can complete a student film during her senior year at a U.S. film school. Applications will open this spring and the winner will be announced ahead of the 2022-23 school year.
“The AI2 Accelerator is designed to launch a next generation filmmaker by providing a suite of resources: financial, relational, and informational,” Smith said. “With this program we are specifically targeting the place where we have seen the least progress over the last decade and a half and taking aim at the biases that continue to thwart inclusive hiring.”
Read “Inclusion in the Director’s Chair: Analysis of Director Gender & Race/Ethnicity Across 1,500 Top Films from 2007 to 2021” in full here.
