Just three days before the Oscars, UCLA's 11th annual Hollywood Diversity Report highlighted a milestone: For the first time in the report's history, the best films of 2023 were those with the most diverse casts .
Three franchise films highlighted in the report — “Creed III,” “Scream VI” and “John Wick: Chapter 4” — starred “50 percent or more actors of color” and “had the highest grossing high of their film series”. according to the Hollywood Diversity Report 2024, Part I, published Thursday.
Additionally, diverse moviegoers and women made up the largest audiences for top films: “People of color dominated the opening weekend sales of 14 of the top 20 films in 2023, while women led the charge among ticket buyers with three films in the top 10,” according to the report.
“Barbie,” which stars Oscar-nominated supporting actors America Ferrera and Ryan Gosling, took the top spot at the box office last year with more than $1.4 billion worldwide. “The key to its opening success were women, who filled theaters and accounted for nearly 70 percent of domestic ticket sales,” the report said.
Still, they found that the share of female screenwriters, lead actresses and overall cast members declined last year and that only three films directed by women received budgets of $100 million or more, compared to 25 films run by men with the same level of budget.
Progress was made behind the camera: the proportion of people of color represented among lead actors, directors and writers was the highest in the report's 11-year history. The share of motion pictures directed by people of color was 22.8%, nearly double since 2011.
Latino representation 'has not improved'
Two of the best films of last year starred Latino actors – Tessa Thompson And Selenis Leyva in “Creed III” and Jenna Ortega and Melissa Barrera in “Scream VI”.
Ana-Christina Ramón, co-founder of the annual report and director of the Entertainment and Media Research Initiative at UCLA, said that even though Latinos make up about 25 percent of moviegoers each year, they are still underrepresented at the 'screen.
“Data consistently shows that representation of the Latinx community has not improved over the years. There seems to be a ceiling,” she said in a telephone interview.
Latinos make up nearly 20% of the U.S. population but “only have a little over 7% representation on camera,” she said.
Among the top films, only five featured Latino protagonists. “Of the four Latinx writers and four directors in the top 200, none were women,” the report said.
Ramón said that now, with Hollywood enters a period of contraction, the industry could be making a “big mistake” by cutting back on films that highlight diversity. The data proves it, she says.
Diana Luna, the executive director of National Association of Latin Independent Producers, said in an interview that behind the camera, “we need people in the room to support our work. And I think that's sometimes a barrier because current decision-makers may not understand it well.
One of the association's missions is to help more Latinos succeed in the studio system, bringing diversity into management so they can promote a better understanding of Latino audiences, Luna said .
“How can we make sure that there is retention, that they move up the ranks to become these leaders, these decision-makers?” she says.
Part of the challenge for Hollywood writers might be timing.
“I think there's a tendency in the industry to follow trends,” said screenwriter Paulo Campos, who co-wrote the Netflix original film.The devil all the time.”
“It’s hard to track, because by the time you finish writing something, that trend will most likely have evolved,” he said in a telephone interview.
When studios become more cautious about money, there could be more pressure for remakes and adaptations, Campos said, because audiences are already familiar with them. It could also mean less money for new and original content.
Although he believes there are periods where new opportunities could be created, timing is key, he reiterated.
“In the early 2000s, the television landscape opened up extraordinarily. But now I think the opening is starting to narrow because there is uncertainty around streaming as a distribution model,” Campos said.
Other creators have also seen changes in the industry create new opportunities.
“When I started in documentary, the field was rather specialized,” Veteran documentary maker and producer Bernardo Ruiz said in a telephone interview. “And then, between 2010 and 2020, the documentary market grew with more commercial players, international buyers and more commercial platforms. »
But these opportunities also posed new challenges.
“What I've seen over time is that these commercial pressures have started to influence what films are made and how they're made,” Ruiz said. “I think when people invest in films now, they expect more commercial success. And that brings its own kind of challenges, because it brings documentaries closer to the entertainment category.
Ruiz said many agents and production companies that actively commissioned diverse stories had closed their doors over the years.
Yet the UCLA report shows that diversity can still pay off big when it meets public expectations.
To learn more about NBC Latino, Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.