With declining diversity, the U.S. theatrical film industry faces an uncertain future

Ryan Coogler's "Sinners," which made history as the most Oscar-nominated film of all time, hit the right notes with theatrical audiences and should serve as an example for an industry hoping to draw people back to the box office, according to the latest Hollywood Diversity Report from UCLA researchers.

The success of the film underscored several trends found in a deep dive into 2025's theatrical releases, including the people behind them and the audiences who fill the seats.

"Sinners," starring Michael B. Jordan and Hailee Steinfeld, was an example of how films with diverse casts perform better at global and domestic box offices than those with less diverse casts. It demonstrated that audiences of color are early indicators of success, as they purchased between half and the majority of opening-weekend tickets for it and 11 other films in the top 20.

Despite its success at the box office, "Sinners," which told an original story, featured diverse leads and overall cast, as well as writer and director, and a budget well over $50 million, still stands as an outlier in opportunities in filmmaking, especially for women and people of color.

"Filmmakers of color usually have to prove themselves for years before they are hired to direct a film that will have a wide-theatrical release with a decent budget. Then, if the film succeeds at the box office, the media frames it as surprising or an anomaly," said Ana-Christina Ramón, director of the Entertainment and Media Research Initiative at UCLA, who co-founded the report series. "However, the success of those films is just proof of why this investment is warranted and should be increased at all budget levels for filmmakers of color."

Overall, researchers found that studios continue to ignore the market when it comes to race, ethnicity, gender and disability.

Across the period studied, people of color experienced only slight rebounds behind the scenes and in the main cast, while representation for women crashed from some of the highs previously reached, pushing back years of progress.

"Studios cannot afford to turn away from women and people of color during this time when the theatrical industry is still struggling," added Ramón. "Working with the creatives from these communities and appealing to these audiences will be integral to the major studios' survival in the next decade."

Missed opportunities amid a volatile era for representation

The latest report found that horror, once again, was the most common genre among the top theatrical releases last year and garnered the highest returns on investment.

Sociologist and co-author Michael Tran highlighted this popular and profitable genre as an example of where studios could increase their appeal. Unlike "Sinners" and the Warner Bros. film "Final Destination: Bloodlines," 64% of the top horror films featured 30% or fewer people of color in their main casts.

"Our data shows that overall, Black and Latinx moviegoers gravitate towards horror movies and diverse films," said Tran. "By choosing not to embrace diversity in a genre that these audiences are already fans of, studios are leaving money on the table and losing their chance to draw people back to theaters."

HDR researchers also warned that studios seemed to be taking women - as actors, creators and audiences - for granted.

Women were drawn to the opening weekend for a film when it had a female lead or a prominent female co-lead, or was an animated family film. Among the top 20 films with the largest share of women in their opening-weekend audiences, 12 had women-centered stories, all but one had a female lead or co-lead and 13 had gender-balanced casts.

But when it came to the top 20 at the global box office, women audiences made up the majority of moviegoers at opening weekends for only four films, including Jon M. Chu's "Wicked: For Good" and Disney's "Zootopia 2," and also showed an overall decline in ticket purchases as Hollywood seemingly didn't offer as much to them.

"Aside from the impact on the box office, the increasing erasure of women in front of and behind the camera among the top theatrical releases should be concerning to all," said Ramón, who attributes the decline to major shifts in on-screen representation, as two-thirds of the top films in 2025 featured casts that were majority male. White men alone accounted for half of all lead actors.

Women's representation in front of the camera dropped to 2022 levels with their share of all roles (37.1%), as well as leads (37.0%). In 2024, women accounted for 47.6% of all leads, almost reaching a level proportionate to the population, reflecting a four-year pattern of high volatility for women in this area.

Only 10.1% of films were directed by a woman, down from 15.4% last year and the lowest share since 2018.

"Looking back, we can see that recent gains have been largely cosmetic or tenuous," said co-author Jade Abston, who is a UCLA doctoral candidate in cinema media studies. "It's like the progress women experienced disappeared."

Actors with disabilities also remain underrepresented, with slight gains as leads at 9.3% and within the main cast at 8.7%, which is the highest since the team started tracking disability status in 2022.

A wake-up call

In this year's Hollywood Diversity Report, researchers found that slightly more than half of the top 200 films that dominated the global box office were in English, with Hollywood still struggling to win back global audiences.

Researchers highlighted the resounding success of "Ne Zha II," only the second non-English language film to ever top the year-end box office list, and the latest "Demon Slayer" movie, which came in seventh, as examples of animated productions - both out of Asia - that are disrupting Hollywood's dominance.

"We know that reflecting the diverse reality we live in and the future we're heading towards resonates with audiences here and abroad and translates to ticket sales," said co-author Nico Garcia, who also noted that people of color were the majority of audiences for animation.

Overall, according to report co-founder Darnell Hunt, theatrical films may have taken the brunt of national political shifts this time around, impacting whose films received the necessary investments needed for marketing and wide distribution.

"Each year, we challenge the industry to break out of old patterns," said Hunt, who serves as the executive vice chancellor and provost at UCLA. "But as the country experiences a powerful blowback against diversity, the studios have relapsed into a colorblind complacency."

"We are almost guaranteed more downward trends," he said. "Not just for diversity and gender parity in film, but also for the industry's success."