Every year, the Annenburg Inclusion Initiative examines “the gender and race/ethnicity of directors working across the 100 top fictional films theatrically released in the U.S.” They’ve just published a study to put a cap on 2019, showing that it was a banner year for female directors.
It’s promising but there is, of course, still much work to be done.
A record percentage of female directors worked on 2019’s highest grossing films, according to research by the Annenburg Inclusion Initiative.
In 2019, 10.6 percent of the top 100 highest grossing films were directed by females, including two films from the year’s top 10 (Frozen 2 directed by Jennifer Lee and Captain Marvel directed by Anna Boden).
Annenburg started their research in 2007 and when placed against previous years, 2019 comes out on top in terms of female representation. Check out the stats below.
A focal point of the research is how little difference there is in the critical reception of films directed by men and women. While male directors, especially white male directors, continue to dominate awards shows and the box office, Metacritic scores tell a different story.
After analysing over 1,300 movies released from 2007 to 2019, the research discovered that female-directed films and male-directed films are received almost equally in the critical world.
Read the full findings from the Annenburg Inclusion Initiative here.
