The diversity in movies of 2022 is still a work in progress, according to two reports. The reports come from The Celluloid Ceiling report from San Diego State and the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. Diversity, meaning the number of women and people of color involved in the filmmaking process. The Celluloid Ceiling report has tracked women’s employment in filmmaking the 250 top-grossing films over the past 25 years. Only 11% of the movies in 2022 had women directors, which declined by 1% from the year before. Women only make up 24% of the directors, writers, executive producers, editors, and cinematographers of the top-grossing films. The number started at 17% in 1998, but diversity in filmmaking for women has not greatly improved. The Annenberg report found that people of color in these top-grossing movies for 2022 dropped by 12.7% from 2021.
Women and People of Color Still Don’t Quite Have the Seat at the Table
The Celluloid Ceiling report noted that women made up 19% of writers, 25% of executive producers, 31% of producers, 21% of editors, and 7% of cinematographers. Again, this is not all for all the films for the year but the 250 top-grossing films. The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that only 11 directors were Asian, five were multiracial/multiethnic, four were Black, and three were Hispanic/Latino. Very little has changed for people of color and women behind the scenes for filmmaking diversity. Movies of 2022 not just lacked diversity but underrepresented these demographics. Among people of color, women of color only made up 2.7% of the directors for the top-grossing films, according to the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. The diversity of underrepresented racial/ethnic groups dropped to 20.7% for movies in 2022, down 6.6% from 2021.
The women and people of color that are involved in filmmaking are just as capable, but things have hardly changed. Production companies like Sony and Universal have been putting in the effort to improve their diversity in filmmaking at least. Nevertheless, there is still a lot of change that needs to happen.
