UCLA released its 12th annual Hollywood Diversity Report on Thursday, painting a picture of an industry eroding years of improvement on increasing representation on cast lists and behind the camera right as the Trump Administration, and an emboldened far-right, escalate attacks on DEI initiatives in the entertainment industry and beyond.
“Last year, we celebrated some historic highs for people of color in the industry,” Ana-Christina Ramón, co-founder of the report and director of UCLA’s Entertainment and Media Research Initiative, said. “But 2024 saw a widespread reversal, as film studios retreated from racial and ethnic diversity in front of and behind the camera.”
The study found that of the 104 films surveyed, the share of films with casts that consisted of less than 11% actors of color more than doubled from 8.5% in 2023 to 18.4% in 2024. That is the highest share since the 28.7% recorded in 2017.
The overall share of roles going to white actors also increased from 59% in 2023 to 67.2% in 2024, reversing a years-long trend of gains for actors of color.
One bright spot came from acting roles for women, which jumped from 32.1% in 2023 to 47.6% in 2024. However, 31% of top theatrical films with women in leading roles had budgets of less than $10 million. By contrast, 33% of films with white men in leading roles had budgets of $100 million or more.
Erosions in diversity among the top theatrical films were also seen among writers, with 149 of the 189 writers credited, or 78.8%, being white men. The share of films written by women fell to 22.1%, down five percentage points from the survey’s high for women in 2022.
In last year’s edition of the Hollywood Diversity Report, co-founder Darnell Hunt warned that such a backslide in diversity gains was likely due to the fallout of the 2023 writers and actors’ strikes. Strained financially by the work stoppage and by the imperative from Wall Street investors to find profitability for their streaming services, studios made major cutbacks on the quantity of films and TV shows they greenlit and acquired, and films with characters and stories from lesser seen backgrounds were predominantly among the cuts.
“The writing was on the wall, as we previously saw the loss of executive positions and programs focused on diversity,” wrote Hunt, who is also the executive vice chancellor and provost at UCLA. “For the studios, it seems that it was not about investing in what our data has shown to be profitable. They went with what they considered safe.”
Despite this backslide, UCLA’s study showed, as it has in years past, that films that eschew a supermajority of white actors in their casts are more successful at the box office. Movies which had people of color representing between 41% and 50% of their cast — consistent with the 44.3% POC share of the U.S. population in the latest census — earned the highest median sales at $234 million domestic. On average, these movies were also released in the most international and domestic markets and ranked the highest for their opening weekends.
Among the box office hits that fit in this 41-50% category include Sony/Marvel’s “Venom: The Last Dance” and Warner Bros./Legendary’s “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.” Conversely, films that had BIPOC cast representation in the 11-20% range had the lowest median gross at just $33 million.
Regardless of the film, non-white audiences continue to be the kingmakers for the box office, making up a majority of the audience share for seven of the top 10 and 12 of the top 20 highest grossing films of the year, including the top four: “Inside Out 2,” “Deadpool & Wolverine,” “Despicable Me 4” and “Moana 2.”
“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.”
But such data comes at a time when the Trump Administration has launched attacks against DEI initiatives in entertainment, academia and beyond. Earlier this month, FCC chair Brendan Carr announced a probe into NBCUniversal and its parent company Comcast intended to “root out invidious forms of DEI discrimination.” Other companies have voluntarily scaled back their DEI programs since Trump’s inauguration, including Disney, while Trump’s Department of Education has issued an order to K-12 schools and universities to shut down all diversity programs by the end of February or risk losing federal funding.
