Key takeaways
- Diversity hits all the right spots. As the U.S. population of people of color grows to an estimated 44.3%, movies reflective of that reality resonated with audiences. These top films hit the peak for median return on investment, earned the highest median domestic box office and on average, were released in the most theaters and ranked the highest for their opening weekends.
- Diverse films win globally. Films with diverse casts surged to the top of the median global box-office receipts above offerings that were less diverse in terms of race and ethnicity. These movies were also once again released in the most international markets on average.
- The industry reversed course on opportunities for people of color. After 2023’s historic highs for people of color in film, the rollback on diversity was evident, as people of color lost ground in all key employment areas and researchers found that 80% of directors and co-directors and 91.5% of writers and co-writers were white.
- Women find more time on screen — but not off screen. Women surpassed even their pre-pandemic numbers as they reached their highest share of lead actors yet. Although they saw slight gains as directors and total actors, women experienced another drop behind the scenes as writers. Also, white women directors were still most likely to be attached to the films with the lowest budgets.
Films like Jon M. Chu’s Oscar-nominated “Wicked” and the Lupita Nyong’o-led “A Quiet Place: Day One” demonstrated once again how movies are going to be popular: diversity on screen.
Domestically and worldwide, films reflective of a multitude of identities outperformed their less-diverse counterparts and were a better return on investment, according to the latest Hollywood Diversity Report.
UCLA researchers found that in 2024, women and people of color continued to drive opening weekend domestic sales at theaters. But while film studios raced to combat the last few years of instability in the entertainment industry, this data analysis shows that opportunities for people of color fell across the board after recent gains, while women also saw a drop as writers, even as their share of lead roles increased.
The Hollywood Diversity Report enters its 12th year of taking a deep dive into movies, television and audiences. Their newest findings, focused on the top 200 movies released globally in theaters in 2024, demonstrate the ups and downs of industry progress, with special attention paid to data and trends on race and ethnicity, gender and disability status around key job categories. The top streaming film releases will be examined separately in the team’s next release.
The researchers also detailed who showed up to the theaters, what they wanted to see and, in this case, the disconnect between those audience preferences and the studio offerings.
“Last year, we celebrated some historic highs for people of color in the industry,” said Ana-Christina Ramón, co-founder of the report and director of UCLA’s Entertainment and Media Research Initiative. “But 2024 saw a widespread reversal, as film studios retreated from racial and ethnic diversity in front of and behind the camera.”
The industry continued to struggle in the wake of the pandemic and the weight of the 2023 strikes. The retreat from diversity was swift, as the freefall that report co-founder Darnell Hunt warned about last year came true.
“The writing was on the wall, as we previously saw the loss of executive positions and programs focused on diversity,” said Hunt, who is also the executive vice chancellor and provost at UCLA. “For the studios, it seems that it wasn’t about investing in what our data has shown to be profitable. They went with what they considered safe.”
Overall, 2024 saw a pullback in wide releases, with only 104 English-language films among the top 200 globally, down from the 109 studied in 2023. The top 20 of these films mainly came from franchises; only three offerings, like the animation “The Wild Robot,” were not a part of an established film series.
There was also a shift in the most common genres, as action and comedy gave way to horror (21.2%) and drama (19.2%) among the top films.
Diversity still sells — and it travels
With domestic ticket sales lagging behind pre-pandemic numbers, the authors remain steadfast in stressing the importance of diverse audiences and the reflection of their experience in casts and stories.
Opening weekend box-office success still lies in the hands of people of color. They continue to lead domestic ticket sales as the majority of moviegoers for 12 of the top 20 films, including seven of the top 10.
Women also played a strong role, making up the majority of ticket buyers for eight of the top 20 movies during opening weekends.
Among the top 20 films where white audiences made up the greatest share of opening weekend box-office sales, only one (at No. 20) ranked No. 1 for its opening weekend.
Furthermore, the films that most reflected America’s diverse population — now estimated to be 44.3% people of color according to the U.S. Census — outperformed other top releases, both here and internationally.
Movies like “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” and “Venom: The Last Dance,” which had people of color representing between 41% and 50% of their cast, earned the highest median sales domestically and overwhelmingly topped global box-office receipts with median sales at $234.6 million. On average, these movies were also released in the most international and domestic markets and ranked the highest for their opening weekends.
“Diversity is a key part of the big financial picture,” said Jade Abston, one of the newest co-authors and a doctoral candidate in cinema media studies at UCLA. “Diversity travels. When a film lacks diverse faces and perspectives, it’s just not as appealing here and abroad.”
Films that were in the 11% to 20% cast diversity range saw the lowest median global box-office sales at $33.3 million.
A rollback in progress
Even as the domestic and global box offices responded positively to diverse films, Hollywood’s progress slid in terms of race, ethnicity and disability, while women posted gains in a few categories.
- Films that had the least diverse casts, featuring less than 11% actors of color, more than doubled to 18.4% over last year’s 8.5%. This is the highest since 2017, when it was at 28.7%.
- The share of main cast roles by actors of color dropped, reversing an upward trajectory since 2019. The white share of all theatrical roles increased to 67.2%, up from 59.6% in 2023.
- In terms of actors with known disabilities, the share of movies that were at or exceeded proportionate representation went from 12.2% in 2023 to 9.7% in 2024. Four films, including “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” and “Wicked,” featured casts where more than 20% of the actors had a known disability and made it into the top 20.
After two years of decline, women’s share of leading roles jumped from 32.1% in 2023 to 47.6%, a level almost proportionate to the population, in 2024. However, 31.4% of top theatrical films with white women as the leads had the smallest budgets — less than $10 million. By contrast, leading white men had 33.3% of their films falling into the range of the highest budgets of $100 million or more.
Another look at investment found that like 2023, white women directors were more likely than white men or people of color to helm films with lower budgets; 45.5% of their films had budgets less than $20 million.
Overall, women directors found their share of films, at 15.4%, was similar to last year’s report at 14.7%. Of the top 200 English-language films in theaters last year, 16 had women directors. Five were women of color.
Within that select group, a single film, “Moana 2,” had a budget of $100 million or more. There were no women among the Black, Latino, Middle Eastern or North African directors of the top films.
An examination of the total number of directors and co-directors of the top films revealed that 80% were white.
Women writers, whose films had the highest share of gender-balanced casts, saw a continuing decline in representation. The number of films penned by a woman fell to 22.1%, down almost 5 percentage points since their high in 2022.
The share of films that had a writer of color dropped a sharp 10 percentage points from last year’s series-high 22.2% to 12.5%.
A breakdown of all writers and co-writers in 2024 found that 91.5% were white, and 149 out of the total 189 film writers were white men.
The track to success
If these rollbacks were a test to see what sticks, the researchers encourage the industry to acknowledge missed opportunities and not give up so easily on diversity.
“Leaders should realize that the track to success is a marathon, not a sprint,” said co-author Michael Tran, who is also a doctoral candidate in sociology. “The key to long-term sustainability — and profits — is the continued progress in showing diverse characters and stories, not stalling or falling backward.”
The researchers found that even in the face of this retreat from diversity, films with population-representative casts, such as “Tarot,” “Imaginary” and “Civil War,” hit the peak in terms of median return on investment. Meanwhile, films that made up the bottom two categories for diversity (0 to 20% people of color) posted the lowest median return on investment.
Ramón noted this year stood out because there were fewer films with diverse casts compared with recent years. People of color went to see the big-budget blockbusters with stars like Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande on opening weekend but were not as excited about the other wide releases throughout the year.
“It’s an enthusiasm gap. Perhaps it’s a marketing issue, but audiences weren’t coming out in droves to see just any film in 2024 if it did not directly appeal to them,” she said. “It’s important for the industry to pay attention to what moviegoers, especially women and people of color who repeatedly drive ticket sales, want.”
The latest survey data on the most targeted moviegoer base — those 18 to 34 — suggests that young adult women, particularly those of color, are vital consumers. For example, for 19 of the top 20 films, young women of color made up the majority of 18- to 34-year-old, female moviegoers who were surveyed. Overall, women of color represented the largest share of moviegoers surveyed for six of the top 20 films, including “Inside Out 2,” which was the highest-grossing film of 2024, and the controversy-embroiled “It Ends with Us.”
As the industry looks ahead, Ramón cautions its leaders not to abandon progress and to demonstrate that they value these key populations.
“Don’t take women and people of color for granted at the box office.”
Additional findings:
- The 11 films featuring multiracial leads posted the highest median global box office ($96 million) and were distributed in the second-most international markets on average (40.2).
- Half of the top 10 films and 13 of the top 20 films at the global box office in 2024 featured casts that were more than 30% people of color. Seven of the top 10 films featured casts that were more than 40% women.
- For the first time since 2015, casts that were majority people of color were found to be the poorest performers. The report suggests their smaller share of total films, with half of them being shown in less than 3,000 domestic theaters, impacted their median sales at the box office.
- 5% of the actors had a known disability, with less than 1% of all roles played by an actor with a visible disability.
- In front of the camera, some populations were noticeably absent: there were no Asian women or Latino actors, along with Native, Middle Eastern or North African actors of any gender who led the top films in theaters. Only one of the top films had a Latina lead.
- Directors of color were more likely to helm releases with budgets exceeding $100 million, followed closely by white men. However, white men directed 20 of these features, while people of color only directed six.
