The pandemic fueled more diversity in the film industry in 2020. Will that progress continue?
UCLA released its annual Hollywood Diversity Report Thursday and revealed major strides in terms of diversity and inclusion for women and people of color in the entertainment industry. But given how the coronavirus pandemic decimated traditional moviegoing last year, the report's co-author is taking the results with a grain of salt.
"If we see the same thing next year, once theaters start reopening, then we know that the changes we're seeing are more meaningful and sustained as opposed to just outliers because of the pandemic year," co-author Darnell Hunt says.
The "Hollywood Diversity Report 2021: Pandemic in Progress" report – which typically only looks at theatrical releases, but included streaming to account for the pandemic's effects on how we watch movies – found that more women and people of color got jobs last year in the categories of lead actors, total cast, writers and directors. In the acting categories, they reached close to proportionate representation (accurately reflecting their make-up of the population at large).
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People of color made up 39.7% of film leads in 2020 – a far cry from only 10.5% in 2011 and even 27.6% in 2019. Women were 47.8% of film leads, compared to 25.6% in 2011. While Black leads were overrepresented compared to their make-up in the U.S. population, Latino, Asian, Middle East and North African and Native leads were underrepresented. The same was true for casts overall.
White, Black and Middle East and North African women specifically were also underrepresented among total cast.
"Films with leads who were people of color or women were more likely to have smaller budgets in 2020 than those with white and male leads," according to the report.
UCLA's report also found people of color and female writers and directors remain underrepresented by about two-to-one compared to their presence in the population. People of color made up 25.4% of the year's top films compared to 14.4% in 2019; women made up 20.5%, up from 15.1% in 2019.
The report examined the top 200 theatrical and streaming film releases in 2020 in an effort to show the presence of women and people of color in front of and behind the camera. Only 338 films came out in U.S. and Canada theaters in 2020, compared to 987 in 2019. Most films studied in the report were released on streaming (54.6%).
"It could be that some of the films we looked at were films that were more diverse and wouldn't have ordinarily been considered in previous years based on the rankings," Hunt points out.
Diverse film casts – that were made up of 41% to 50% minorities – had the highest medial global box office receipts; those with less than 11% minorities performed the worst. For context: global box office numbers fell 72% between 2019 ($42.3 billion) and 2020 ($12 billion). In the U.S. and Canada, ticket sales went from $11.4 billion in 2019 to only $2.2 billion in 2020.
For films that were released on streaming, ratings among viewers 18 to 49 years old were highest for films with 21% to 30% minority casts.
"Though it is clear that streaming will play a larger role in the distribution of major films going forward, it is less clear how this new normal will take shape with respect to diverse content and the particular mix of theatrical and streaming films," according to the report.
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Hunt says the arrows are pointing in the direction that diversity does sell and the market is becoming more diverse — and that gives him hope about the future.
"It's more profitable to make projects that diverse audiences can relate to," he says. It gives him hope going forward we'll continue to see a trend in the direction we've seen – it just may not be as extreme as this past year.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Hollywood diversity report: Pandemic paved way for inclusion in movies
