News

She is the Music will honor Gracie Abrams for a special event at the Peppermint Club in Los Angeles later this month, the advocacy group announced on Thursday, for an evening that will also honor 50 accomplished women in the business while trying to build out a larger community for the next generation of women in the industry.

The event, called Women Sharing the Spotlight, is slated for March 27, with partnership from Live Nation Women and TuneCore, while The Hollywood Reporter is serving as the event’s media partner. During the event, Dr. Stacy Smith of USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initative will present the latest findings from this year’s annual Inclusion in the Music Business report alongside TuneCore CEO Andreea Gleeson.

To hone in on efforts to uplift one another, She is The Music is asking the 50 women being honored to bring a woman earlier in her career to the...

As you may have heard earlier today, representation for women on screen had a record year in 2024. For the first time, movies with female protagonists reached parity with male protagonists among the top 100 grossing films of the year.

Those were findings as reported in an annual study from Dr. Martha Lauzen at San Diego State University, but coincidentally, they were also similar findings as confirmed by a competing report by Dr. Stacy Smith at the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, also released today. The Annenberg report, titled “Inequality Across 1,800 Popular Films,” noted that 54 of the top grossing films of the year had a female lead or co-lead, up from just 30 in 2023.

Dr. Smith also analyzed the slates of individual studios and found that Universal Pictures featured the highest percentage (66.7 percent) of female-identified leads/co leads, followed by Warner Bros. Pictures (55.6 percent), and Lionsgate (54.5 percent). Sony Pictures fared the worst, as 38.5 percent...

The music business is still a boys’ club, according to a report breaking down the gender makeup on the credits for many of last year’s biggest songs.

The University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative released its annual “Inclusion in the Recording Studio” report on Wednesday, reflecting an industry stagnant in improving its mostly male ranks both for the artists it champions and the producers and songwriters behind the hits. While last year’s report suggested an improvement in 2023, the figures on the latest release were mostly flat.

Producer David Puttnamquoted Bette Davis at theBritish Screen Forum’s annual conference this week in London when he said: ”It’s no time for sissies” in reference to the challenges facing the industry heading into 2025.

Some shifts in business models may feel like a return to familiar and comfortable ground for the industry. However, rapidly advancing AI technology, soaring production budgets and persistent issues surrounding inclusivity mean there is plenty of work to be done, said speakers including Lucasfilm’s Kathleen Kennedy, Sister co-founder Jane Featherstone, USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative founder Stacy Smith, Bafta CEO Jane Millichip and Caroline Dinenage,...

Paramount+ has set an October 22, 2024 premiere date for Uncharted, a documentary focusing on Alicia Keys’ She Is The Music songwriting camp. “Everything done in this film was done by women in every capacity,” stated Keys. “You get a true sense of the journey of these artists and the songwriting process which is so special.”

Peabody Award winner Beth Aala directed and produced the feature-length documentary. Executive producers include Alicia Keys, Abby Greensfelder, Katie Couric, Abigail Rodriguez, Brenda Robinson, Regina K. Scully, and Geralyn White Dreyfous. She Is The Music’s Jody Gerson, Ann Mincieli, Sam Kirby Yoh, Dr. Stacy Smith, and Michelle Arkuski also executive produce.

“Uncharted takes us behind the scenes of Alicia Keys’ She Is The Music songwriting camp in this revealing look at the music business that focuses on the lack of access and opportunity granted to young black and brown women. The camp’s participants take...

Today, Paramount+ announced that the new feature-length documentary Uncharted will premiere exclusively on the service in the U.S. and Canada on Tuesday, October 22, and Wednesday, October 23, in the U.K., Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. The show will also premiere on Paramount+ Japan on Friday, November 15.

Produced by Abby Greensfelder’s Everywoman Studios for MTV Entertainment Studios and directed by Emmy and Peabody Award winner Beth Aala, the film first debuted worldwide at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival.

Uncharted takes us behind the scenes of Alicia Keys’ She Is The Music songwriting camp in this revealing look at the music business that focuses on the lack of access and opportunity granted to young black and brown women. The camp’s participants take center stage as they try to break through the industry with the next big hit song.

Among those featured, we meet Ayoni from Barbados, who follows in Rihanna‘s...

Paramount+ is fallin’ for Alicia Keys this month. The streamer has set an October 22 North American premiere date for Uncharted, a feature-length documentary look at the 16-time Grammy winner’s She Is the Music songwriting camp. Watch a trailer below.

Directed by two-time Emmy winner Beth Aala, the film will bow October 23 in the UK, Germany, Switzerland and Austria and November 15 in Japan.

Produced by Abby Greensfelder’s Everywoman Studios for MTV Entertainment Studios, Uncharted premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Festival. It goes behind the scenes of Keys’ songwriting camp with a revealing look at the music business that focuses on the lack of access and opportunity granted to young black and brown women. She Is the Music’s participants take center stage as they try to break through the industry with the next big hit song.

Among the people featured are Ayoni from Barbados, who follows in Rihanna’s footsteps...

Get a contract wrong for a movie, and a studio might just end up paying the price a little further down the line…

A word to the wise: when entering into a pact with Tommy Lee Jones, make sure your contract is watertight. Because Mr Jones – he who will not sanction your buffoonery nor crack a smile at your Academy Award presentation skit – will happily take advantage of a typo or poorly-drafted phrase in your written agreement.

Mr Jones claims he took a lower salary to star in 2007’s Oscar-winning No Country For Old Men due to the provision of generous box office bonuses should the film prove a financial success. Directors Joel and Ethan Coen and producer Scott Rudin came to similar agreements – although it was a bit of a gamble on all their parts. You see, the parties would only receive their full and substantial bonuses when either...

When Cate Blanchett starts shooting a new movie or show, it’s always the same story.

“It’s like Groundhog Day,” Blanchett said at the Kering Women in Motion Talks at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday. “I do the head count, and I’m back in the same place, working with men who I love working with and respect, [but] I’m walking on set and there’s 50 people on set and there’s three women. When is this going to deeply, profoundly shift?”

Blanchett is trying to change a system that remains male-dominated despite all the panels and protests and calls for action. In addition to debuting her latest film “Rumours” (which she also executive produced), the Oscar-winner is at the festival to promote Proof of Concept, an accelerator program she co-founded last year to elevate the perspectives of women, trans and nonbinary people by financially backing their short “proof of concept” films.

Safe to say Drive My Car‘s success wouldn’t have reached its historic heights sans Eiko Ishibashi, whose musical contributions acted as both complement and counterpoint to Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s lengthy, ornate drama. Perhaps nobody would affirm this more than Hamaguchi: likely facing every opportunity a filmmaker, Japanese or otherwise, could want from the western world, he instead visited Ishibashi and troupe member Jim O’Rourke to film their performances in a small mountainous town, and from this emerged the dual projects Gift and Evil Does Not Exist.

After last week’s live performances of Gift at Film at Lincoln Center, I spoke to Ishibashi about the unique operation, her ongoing creative partnership with Hamaguchi, and attitude towards filmmaking practice.

Thanks to Stacy Smith, who provided interpretation.

The Film Stage: I saw Gift two nights ago––a very restorative experience. This quote kind of clarified why: “There is some element...

Cate Blanchett and her producing partner Coco Francini told IndieWire the tagline for their new diversity grant program should be “Intensely Practical.” Ok, so it was at least partially a joke based on an off-the-cuff remark by Blanchett, but it’s also not a bad differentiator between their incubator and others.

Blanchett through the Proof of Concept Accelerator is offering eight filmmakers $50,000 to make short films from their unique POVs. The real value however may be in her selection committee: Chloé Zhao, Emma Corrin, Eva Longoria, Greta Gerwig, Jane Campion, Janicza Bravo, Lily Gladstone, and Lilly Wachowski.

The money (and the mentorship) is definitely practical, sure, but “intensely”? No one is more intensely practical than USC’s Dr. Stacy Smith.

Through her Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, Smith has studied diversity in entertainment for more than 20 years. She’d like to say the industry has changed before her very eyes, but it hasn’t.

Lily Gladstone has always been a huge fan of Cate Blanchett and now, fresh off joining her acting idol in the elite realm of best actress Academy Award nominees, the two women are teaming up.

Not on screen (yet), but for a greater cause.

Gladstone is among the boldfaced names joining the selection committee for Proof of Concept, an accelerator program focused on supporting the perspectives of women, trans and non-binary people by financially backing their short “proof of concept” films.

The program was announced last December, with Blanchett and her Dirty Films partner Coco Francini teaming up with Dr. Stacy Smith, founder of the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative and supported by the Netflix Fund for Creative Equity to tackle the ongoing disparities facing these communities in the entertainment business.

Per the latest annual reports from Dr. Smith and the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, only 6% of the directors of the 1,700 top-grossing...

Women in film in 2023 were getting younger. When it came to all female characters that had speaking roles in last year’s top grossing movies, fewer than half were from women over the age of 40.

The latest report from Dr. Martha Lauzen’s famous Celluloid Ceiling study — this year called “It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World” — found that on the whole, female characters were significantly younger than their male counterparts.

According to the study, which looks at the top 100 grossing movies released at the domestic box office in the year, 33 percent of female characters were in their 30s, but that number dropped precipitously to 15 percent for those in their 40s. Only 7 percent of female characters were over 60. For men, that decline didn’t happen until they got to age 50. The percentage of male characters in their 30s was the same as male characters in their 40s, at 28 percent, but...

Following several years of stagnation in diversifying the ranks of the mostly male hitmakers behind many of music’s biggest hits, the industry saw some improvements last year, according to a report released on Tuesday. The number of female songwriters, artists, and producers on last year’s biggest hits was the highest they have been in 12 years, the report said.

Every year since 2018, USC Annenberg’s Inclusion Initiative report — dubbed “Inclusion in the Recording Studio?” — has broken down the gender and race statistics from the credits on Billboard’s Hot 100 songs chart,...

Netflix supporting Proof Of Concept initiative to challenge barriers in funding, mentorship, exposure.

Cate Blanchett and her Dirty Films partner Coco Francini have teamed up with Stacy L. Smith and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative to launch the Proof of Concept Accelerator Program to identify the next generation of filmmakers whose stories promote the perspectives of women, trans, and non-binary people.

The initiative is supported by Netflix and is designed to challenge what the founders call “the three most significant barriers these directors face as they navigate the industry”: funding, mentorship, and exposure.

Up to eight filmmakers will be selected for the inaugural group,...

Cate Blanchett and Coco Francini, who are partners in Dirty Films, along with Dr. Stacy L. Smith and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative have launched the Proof of Concept Accelerator Program.

Supported by Netflix, the program’s goal is to identify the next generation of filmmaking talent whose stories promote the perspectives of women, trans, and nonbinary people.

According to the latest annual report from Smith and Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, 6% of directors across 1,600 top-grossing movies were women and less than one-third of all speaking characters on screen in those movies were girls, women, trans or non-binary people. This lack of inclusion behind the camera and on screen means there are limited career opportunities for women, trans, and non-binary storytellers and those who want to bring their stories to the screen.

Proof of Concept challenges the three most significant barriers these directors face as they navigate the industry: funding, mentorship, and exposure.

Cate Blanchett and her Dirty Films partner Coco Francini have partnered with USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative to launch the Proof of Concept Accelerator Program to support storytellers with projects about women, trans or non-binary people.

Such folks currently represent less than a third of all speaking characters in the movies, according to AI2’s comprehensive report in August. To rectify that up to eight filmmakers will receive $50,000, one-on-one mentorship and guidance from industry leaders to create a short film that will serve as a “proof of concept” for a feature film or TV series.

“Providing tangible financial and career support for filmmakers who often get overlooked will not only give them a fantastic launchpad to success, it will also expand the future of film and television,” Blanchett said in a statement. Added Francini in a statement, “Proof of Concept was designed to solve a very simple problem: Audiences want...

In the realm of popular music, statistics can reveal the truth behind the glitz and glamour. USC Annenberg’s Inclusion in the Recording Studio study, provides an insightful examination into the lack of women present in the music industry across various sections including engineering, songwriting, producers, spanning from 2012 to 2019. Across 800 popular songs, the study shines a spotlight on an industry that has been predominantly white and male.

However, the emergence of the organization She Is The Music, co-founded by Alicia Keys (Ak Worldwide), recording and mixing engineer Ann Mincieli (Ak Worldwide/Jungle City Studios), Sam Kirby Yoh, Co-Head of UTA, Dr. Stacy Smith of USC, Rebecca Leon of Lionfish Entertainment and Jody Gerson at Universal Music publishing, materialized in response to the stark data from USC Annenberg’s study. The initiative encompasses mentoring programs, songwriting camps, and a global database of female creators, reflecting a profound commitment to cultivating and...

Dr. Stacy Smith and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, in collaboration with the Adobe Foundation, have launched The Inclusion List, a first-of-its-kind data website that ranks the most inclusive theatrically-released films, distributors and producers from 2019 to 2022.

The Inclusion List is a data-driven ranking system that analyzes theatrically-released films based on their levels of representation, with Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King” and Lulu Wang’s “The Farewell” leading the list of the top 100 films.

Dr. Smith, founder and director of USC Annenberg’s Inclusion Initiative, and Amy White, director of corporate social responsibility at Adobe and the executive director of the Adobe Foundation, spearheaded the project, with the initiative’s Samuel Wheeler, Brooke Kong, Dr. Katherine Pieper and Smith authoring the report.

In the process of compiling the list, the research team sorted through 376 theatrically-released films across a span of 20 inclusion indicators, assessing gender, race/ethnicity, LGBTQ, disability and age...

Today, Dr. L Stacy Smith and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, in collaboration with the Adobe Foundation, debuts a new, first-of-its kind ranking system, The Inclusion List, to show the world just who is doing it best when it comes to representation in theatrically-released films.

The Inclusion List, appearing at www.inclusionlist.org, is a new data-driven ranking that provides the titles of the 100 most inclusive theatrically-released films from 2019 to 2022. The website also highlights the top distributors associated with the movies on the list, names eight individuals as the top producers and showcases two top directors for inclusion across the time frame evaluated.

“With The Inclusion List, our goal is to celebrate the films, filmmakers, and companies who are supporting inclusion on screen and behind-the-camera,” said Dr. Stacy L. Smith, Annenberg Inclusion Initiative Founder. “This is the first rigorous, quantitative assessment of hiring practices across almost 400 movies and more than 900 producers,...

Women and girls are featured in more than 60 percent of stories and were over half of the leading and co-leading roles in Netflix content in 2021, according to the streamer’s second film and TV series diversity study.

Released on Thursday, the Inclusion in Netflix Original U.S. Scripted Series and Films report also indicates increases in Lgbtqia+ leads and co-leads since 2019. But the invisibility of certain women of color continues on the platform, alongside those with disabilities who remain starkly underrepresented in Netflix programming.

The study, which provides new data on programming aired between 2020 and 2021, is the latest look at the streamer’s content as it relates to gender, race/ethnicity, Lgbtqia+ and disability representation across live-action, scripted films and series. The findings — which the streamer commissioned from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative and agreed to release every two years through 2026 — focus on onscreen storytelling and track certain access and opportunities behind the camera.

Shonda Rhimes, creator of “Bridgerton” and the upcoming prequel series “Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story,” is known for creating powerful screen stories that center women and a diverse range of characters of all gender, racial, ethnic and sexual identities.

But, as Rhimes began to focus on ensuring her Shondaland productions were equally diverse behind the scenes, she came to recognize a key role in that mission: the line producer.

“You look around the set and it’s great to have a Black director or a Black writer and Black actors and then the entire crew doesn’t really represent America or the world,” Rhimes said in a virtual symposium with Netflix chief content officer Bela Bajaria, chairman of Netflix films Scott Stuber, filmmaker Tyler Perry and researcher Dr. Stacy Smith. “If you have a line producer who is on board with what you are feeling, then your crew is completely different.

Female actors of color had a banner year in 2022, according to the latest report from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which found a “significant increase” in the number of top-grossing films with girls and women of color in leading and co-leading roles last year.

Overall, however, the report found that “the pace of industry change is certainly not a breakneck one,” and that any commitments the industry made to diversity and inclusion in recent years “were mere lip service when it comes to key roles on screen.”

The report found that in 2022, 16 of the 100 top-grossing films featured a girl or woman from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group in a leading or co-leading role. This was up from just 11 films in 2021 and from only one movie in 2007. The report, however, concluded that this was the “lone bright spot” in its findings.

“The progress for women of color in leading roles is encouraging,...

A new study has found that people with mental health conditions rarely are depicted in Hollywood’s most popular films and that their depiction “remains one of predominantly white, male, straight and able-bodied characters.”

The report, from Dr. Stacy Smith and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, found that of the 4,502 speaking or named characters across the 200 top-grossing films of 2019, only 1.5 were depicted with mental health conditions, which was down from 1.7 in 2016. By contrast, 21 of U.S. adults experience mental illness, according to national population research studies such as the U.S. National Comorbidity Survey.

“Stories can provide a window into different worlds and experiences, but the results of this study demonstrate that mental health is rarely a focal point in popular film,” Smith said. “With the growing need for mental health care in the U.S., and the ongoing concern about well-being, storytellers and creatives are missing critical opportunities to educate audiences.

For all the posturing and promises extended to women in music for years, the music industry has proven almost entirely ineffective at diversifying the mostly male ranks that create music’s biggest tracks. That’s according to the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative’s latest “Inclusion in the Recording Studio?” report, which for the past five years has analyzed gender makeup of artists, songwriters, and producers behind all of the tracks on the Billboard’s year end Hot 100 and on the nominations for major Grammy categories, effectively quantifying how little representation...

For the last three years, women and underrepresented directors in Hollywood saw sustained growth and progress in opportunities to direct the year’s top films, despite the complications at the box office due to the pandemic.

The optimistic data comes from a new study from the USC Anennberg Inclusion Initiative, which this year attempted to account for the pandemic and aimed to identify where real progress has taken place and where there’s still room to grow.

Of the top films in 2020, 15% were directed by a woman — an all-time high — and while only 12.7% of the films in 2021 were directed by women, USC Annenberg considers this persistent, sustained growth for women dating back to 2018.

“This is the first sustained increase we have seen in the percentage of women directors since 2007,” Dr. Stacy Smith said. “Even when we examined several different samples of top-grossing films to account for the effects of the coronavirus pandemic,...

On Tuesday, “The Power of the Dog” director Jane Campion made Oscar history as the first woman to receive two best director nominations.

Campion is nominated in the 2022 directing category opposite Steven Spielberg for “West Side Story,” Kenneth Branagh for “Belfast,” Paul Thomas Anderson for “Licorice Pizza” and Ryusuke Hamaguchi for “Drive My Car.” Her first Oscar nod for directing came in 1994 when she was nominated for “The Piano” at the 66th Academy Awards. She won the Oscar for original screenplay that year.

“It’s both sad but it’s also great that women are punching that glass ceiling out of the way. I really feel things are changing,” Campion told Variety of her directing nomination.

Exactly how much things are changing behind the camera with regard to gender and racial equity has been analyzed by Dr. Stacy Smith and the team at the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative as they release their annual study.

Latinos accounted for just 12% of employees in U.S. media jobs in 2019 compared to 18% of the total U.S. workforce, according to a new federal study demonstrating how Hispanic Americans continue to be underrepresented in Hollywood and media.

The new study, published by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, defined media to include film, television, publishing and news. Employment varied widely between sectors of media; 8% of publishing subsector workers were Latino in 2019, while the film and video industry totaled 16%.

However, the actual representation within every sector also varied by occupation. On average, the Gao found that 11% of jobs across 13 different media occupations were held by Latino workers. But broken down more specifically, the numbers tell a different story. According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which provided data through 2018, service jobs — such as cleaning, food service, valets or security — by far had the largest percentage of Latino workers at 22%.

US Gao

By contrast,...

A new report on the movie business concludes that popular movies continue to marginalize Hispanic and Latino characters.

The report — released Wednesday by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, Stacy Smith and partners Eva Longoria’s UnbeliEVAble Entertainment and Wise Entertainment — found that only 7% of the 100 highest-grossing films from 2019 featured a lead or co-lead of Hispanic or Latino origin.

“As companies celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month through online posts, events, and employee resources, the evidence is clear that concern for inclusion happens when convenient or expected and not when it comes to greenlighting films by, for and about the Hispanic/Latino community,” Smith said in a statement.

According to a statement from USC Annenberg, the report examines the prevalence and portrayal of Hispanic and Latinos in film and represents the second in a series from the Annenberg Initiative. The current study serves as an update to previous findings by evaluating top grossing...

Amazon Studios on Wednesday unveiled a division-wide policy that underscores its commitment to diversity, inclusion and equity for its content and productions, along with a “playbook” that includes guidelines for its collaborators in the creative community.

The policy covers four primary areas that offer actionable recommendations to continue to seek out storytelling that amplifies diverse voices throughout all aspects of the production process: Developing Stories and Characters, Hiring and Production, Reporting and Documentation, and Meeting Goals.

The policy includes specific goals for Amazon Studios-based productions, including:

Each film or series with a creative team of three or more people in above-the-line roles should ideally include a minimum 30% women and 30% members of an underrepresented racial/ethnic group. This aspirational goal will increase to 50% by 2024. Casting actors whose identity aligns with the character they will be playing. Aiming to include...

The University of Southern California (USC)’s Annenberg Institute, which conducts annual research on gender and race in the music business, released a new report on Tuesday. It details the gender and race makeup of executive-level managers across the music business — and unsurprisingly, the Institute’s findings suggest significant room for more diverse ranks among the most powerful leaders in music.

Researchers Stacy Smith, Carmen Lee, Marc Choueiti, Katherine Pieper, Zoe Moore, Dana Dinh and Artur Tofan analyzed the rank, title, gender and race of 4,060 executives across 119 companies between last...

Newly-minted Oscar-nominee and Emmy-winner Riz Ahmed has become just as well known for his activism as for his performances in projects like “Sound of Metal” or “The Night Of.”

Now the actor, musician and producer is taking his fight one step further, by launching a multi-layered initiative for Muslim representation in media, in partnership with the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, the Ford Foundation and Pillars Fund. Powered by USC Annenberg’s new study on Muslim representation in media — which found that less than 10% of top grossing films from 2017-2019 had a Muslim character on screen, with less than 2% of those characters having speaking roles — the coalition has created the Blueprint for Muslim Inclusion, as well as the Pillars Artists Fellowship, offering selected grantees an unrestricted award of $25,000.

The grantees will also receive mentorship from the fellowship’s advisory board, made up of Muslim artists, including Ahmed, Mahershala Ali, Ramy Youssef,...

Muslim characters were present in less than 10% of 200 of the most recent popular films, a new study found, and when their characters are given rare speaking roles, they’re often depicted as foreigners, dangerous or in other stereotypical lights.

The survey is the latest from USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which selected 200 popular films released between 2017 and 2019 in the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand and found that less than 2% of more than 8,500 speaking characters in these movies were Muslim.

The study is also getting a boost from actor and Oscar nominee for “Sound of Metal” Riz Ahmed, who in addition to the data is joining with the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative as part of a coalition called The Blueprint for Muslim Inclusion. And Ahmed will also sponsor a fellowship of $25,000 for Muslim artists in the U.S. and the U.K.

“The representation of Muslims on screen feeds the policies that get enacted,...

Asian and Pacific Islander characters on screen were completely missing from 39% — or roughly four out of 10 — of the top grossing films dating back to 2007, a new study has found. Of 1,300 analyzed films, only 44 movies, or 3.4%, had an Api lead or co-lead.

That last number is not great, and it would be even worse if not for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who is of Samoan heritage and was the star of 14 of those 44 movies. Only six of the 44 films had a lead that was either a woman or a girl.

The new data on Asians and Pacific Islanders in film comes from the latest study from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. Its latest survey did not pull any punches, saying, “White male actors named Ben, Chris, Daniel, James, Jason, John, Josh, Michael, Robert, Sean or Tom were far more likely to be hired as the top actor in a film than...

Sunday night’s Oscars were the most inclusive ever in terms of one of Hollywood’s most overlooked areas of discrimination – ageism against older actors.

At 83, Anthony Hopkins was the oldest ever to win for Best Actor; Frances McDormand, at 63, was the third oldest to win for Best Actress, and Youn Yuh-jung, at 73, was the third oldest to win for Best Supporting Actress. In two of the acting categories, the Oscar was awarded to the oldest nominees – Hopkins and McDormand. Youn, who is three months younger than fellow nominee Glenn Close, was the second-oldest in her category.

Four years ago, a report from the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism found that characters ages 60 and over “are scarce in Best Picture-nominated movies” and that senior women and older minority characters are even more rare. It also found that there were only two leading characters over 60 featured in all of...

“Wonder Woman 1984,” “Promising Young Woman” and “Pieces of a Woman” may have been major film releases in 2020, but new statistics show that 2020 was hardly the year of the woman protagonist on film despite the fact that major Hollywood studio releases where men have traditionally dominated were often postponed or shifted to streaming during the pandemic.

According to “It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World” — a report released Tuesday by Martha Lauzen, executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University — the percentage of the 100 top-grossing films featuring female protagonists dropped from 40% in 2019 to 29% in 2020 — a decline of nearly 28%.

The study reports that 49% of 2020’s top-grossing films featured male protagonists and 22% had ensembles sharing the protagonist role. The study defines protagonists as characters from whose perspective the story is told.

“As protagonists in films, females took a step back in 2020 after two consecutive years of growth,...

Keri Putnam, a fixture in Hollywood thanks to her longtime shepherding of America’s preeminent film festival, is resigning her post as CEO of the Sundance Institute.

Putnam has served in the role for over a decade, guiding the organization’s numerous programs and initiatives to fund and uplift indie filmmaking and marginalized voices, as well as overseeing the annual Park City-based festival.

“It’s been such an amazing ride. It’s been so immersive and rewarding, and I’m so proud of what we’ve done. After a decade, it’s the right time for me, for my next chapter and my next challenge,” Putnam told Variety. She will remain in the post through August, and is considering a return to the creative executive space, in which she has over two decades of experience.

“As a fierce supporter of independent creators, Keri has been instrumental in seeing the institute through a decade of transformation,...

After a very successful ten-year run, Keri Putnam will be departing the Sundance Institute as CEO at the end of August.

A successor has yet to be named. Board of Trustees Chair Pat Mitchell and Vice-Chair Ebs Burnough will Co-Chair a Search Committee to identify Sundance Institute’s next Chief Executive.

Putnam’s departure comes in the wake of John Cooper’s exit in January 2020 as Festival Director, through he continues to be involved as an Emeritus Director, actively engaged with Sundance alumni and other sundry fest projects. While Sff Founder Robert Redford said he would not longer have a public-facing role in January 2019, the esteemed star and Oscar-winning filmmaker remains involved with Sundance Institute as a member of the board.

“As a fierce supporter of independent creators, Keri has been instrumental in seeing the Institute through a decade of transformation, while keeping a laser-focus on Sundance’s mission of preserving,...

Keri Putnam, CEO of the Sundance Institute, will step down from her role later this year after more than 10 years with the arts non-profit.

Putnam this week informed staff and the Board of Trustees of her decision. She will remain in the role through the end of the fiscal year. Board of Trustees chair Pat Mitchell and vice-chair Ebs Burnough will co-chair a search committee to find Putnam’s replacement.

Under Putnam’s leadership, Sundance hosted its first ever virtual festival earlier this year, and she also led the non-profit in growth as well as the launch of new programs to support artists seeking production, financing and distribution, including Sundance Catalyst, which raised $40 million in equity and grant investment over the past eight years for a wide variety of independent projects.

“After an incredibly rewarding decade, and following the success of our first-ever online Festival, I have decided it’s...

“We cannot overstate her impact,” says founder Robert Redford.

After more than 10 years at the helm Sundance Institute CEO Keri Putnam has announced she will step down later this year.

Board of trustees chair Pat Mitchell and vice-chair Ebs Burnough will jointly lead a search committee to find Putnam’s replacement.

“After an incredibly rewarding decade, and following the success of our first-ever online festival, I have decided it’s the right time for me to step down as CEO of Sundance Institute,” said Putnam on Thursday (March 25). “Leading Sundance through this volatile era in media together with such an...

The Academy on Monday nominated a record 70 women with a total of 76 Oscar nominations, the highest total ever and the biggest step toward gender parity.

Based on TheWrap’s count, 76 of the 235 individual nominees across all 23 competitive categories from this year’s crop of films are women, or approximately 32.3%. Percentage wise, that’s just ahead of the 31.1% achieved in 2020’s nominations, when women received 65 of the 209 individual nominations across 24 competitive categories (this year Best Sound Mixing and Sound Editing were combined into one category). It’s also up from past years when 62 of 225 nominees in 2019 (27.5%) were women, as were 57 of 213 individual nominees in 2018 (26.8%) and 48 of 211 in 2017 (22.7%).

In TheWrap’s analysis, individuals nominated in multiple categories, like Chloé Zhao and Emerald Fennell, were counted for each of their nominations. The count also does not include nominees in Best International Film, which officially goes to the country of origin.

Beyond the numbers alone,...

Same song, different verse — quite literally, it turns out. On Monday (March 8th), the University of South California’s Annenberg Institute released its latest report on music creator demographics, finding that women still make up meager percentages of artists, songwriters, and producers on music charts and award-nomination slates, marking “no meaningful and sustained increase” in the number of female musicians in the male-governed music-making business in close to a decade.

The fourth annual report, conducted by USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative with funding from Spotify, examined the gender and race of artists,...

Netflix is setting up a $100 million fund that will be spent over the next five years helping members of underrepresented communities in entertainment find opportunities and receive mentoring.

In a blog from co-ceo Ted Sarandos on Friday, Netflix explained that the $100 million will go to a combination of external organizations with a track record of setting underrepresented communities up for success in the TV and film industries. And Netflix will also create bespoke programs within Netflix to identify, train and provide job placement for up-and-coming talent.

Some of the organizations Netflix has previously supported and will continue to contribute to include the Ghetto Film School, Film Independent’s Project Involve, Firelight Media and Black Public Media to help foster Black creators, as well as the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival’s Latinx Inclusion Fellowship Series, which mentors Afro Latinx directors.

The bespoke programs will include workshops for writers and directors and incubators.

In the first major overview of Netflix’s original movies and series, Dr. Stacy Smith’s USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that the streamer reached gender equality in leading roles but lagged in others measures of diversity, particularly when it came to representation for Latinx and LGBTQ+ individuals.

In a report issued Friday (read an executive summary here and the full report here), Smith analyzed 126 original movies and 180 original scripted series Netflix released between 2018 and 2019. One notable finding was that among women in leading roles in both film and TV, Netflix reached gender parity that not only surpassed the industry at large but also matched the national population.

Specifically, 48.4% of all Netflix films in 2018 and 2019 had a female lead or co-lead, as did 54.5% of series, for a total of 157 leads across all of Netflix’s originals. USC traditionally analyzes the top 100 films at the box office per year, and by comparison,...

2018-19 custody of streamer’s content by Dr. Stacy Smith found streamer improved year-on-year in 19 out of 22 inclusion indicators.

Netflix will invest $100m over the next five years in organisations with a proven record championing underrepresented communities in film and TV through its Netflix Fund for Creative Equity.

The fund will also be used to back in-house initiatives to identify, train and provide job placement globally for emerging talent.

The development comes as the streamer unveiled on Friday (February 26) findings from a study by renowned researcher Dr. Stacy Smith, the founder and director of USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, whose team...

Ryan Reynolds has launched “The Group Effort Initiative,” a diversity and inclusion program that Reynolds is self financing with the goal of giving people of color opportunities to work and learn on the “Deadpool” actor’s productions, the actor announced on Friday.

Reynolds will be mentoring between 10 and 20 trainees of all ages who are black, indigenous, people of color or from marginalized communities. These new trainees will be both paid and housed out of his own salary and will spend their days on set, learning from on-set professionals and getting real-life experience that they can then parlay into another job and hopefully a career in the film industry.

The Group Effort Initiative will commence on Reynold’s upcoming action-adventure film, currently untitled and produced and directed by Shawn Levy, and will continue on for future projects.

Also Read: Ryan Reynolds, Shawn Levy Time Travel Movie Jumps to Netflix From Paramount...

Where are all the women? According to RollIng Stone‘s just-published rankings of the biggest songs and albums of the first half of 2020, female artists are vastly underrepresented. Among the Top 100, there are only 19 songs and 17 albums by women.

When compared with all of 2019, the number of woman-led songs is down by seven percent. The number of woman-led albums, meanwhile, has increased by one. The midyear songs and albums rankings are measured by song and album units, which combine sales and on-demand audio streams using a custom weighting system, and...

Female critics wrote less than 30% of the reviews for new films in key European territories.

France’s Collectif 50/50, the Paris-based body behind the festival gender parity charter as well as the Cannes 82 women red carpet protest in 2018, has unveiled a major new study investigating the gender split of film critics in key European territories.

The research analysed the gender of critics writing reviews on new releases from October 2018 to September 2019 in Denmark, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Sweden.

Data from a pilot report on France, which was published during the Cannes Film Festival last year ahead of the wider study,...

Natalie Portman has fired back at activist Rose McGowan, who blasted her for faux activism stemming from the gesture of wearing a cape at the Academy Awards featuring the names of snubbed female directors.

McGowan said in a Facebook post Tuesday that Portman’s gesture was hollow and asked her to “stop pretending you’re some kind of champion for anything other than yourself.” McGowan said Portman has “worked with two female directors in your very long career- one of them was you.”

Portman’s Oscars outfit featured a cape embroidered with the names of Greta Gerwig (Little Women”), Lulu Wang (The Farewell), Lorene Scafaria (Hustlers), Marielle Heller (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood), Mati Diop (Atlantics), Melina Matsoukas (Queen & Slim), Alma Har’el (Honey Boy) and Céline Sciamma (Portrait of a Lady on Fire).

“Some thoughts on Natalie Portman and her Oscar ‘protest,’” McGowan’s Facebook post said. “The...

Natalie Portman has responded to Rose McGowan’s social media critique of her red carpet protest at the Oscars. The “Black Swan” star created a stir with her decision to wear a black and gold Dior dress that included a cape embroidered with the names of snubbed female directors.

However, her act of haute couture defiance didn’t sit well with McGowan, who called Portman a “fraud” and said wearing the cloak wasn’t an act of bravery, it was, “More like an actress acting the part of someone who cares.” In a statement, Portman agreed with McGowan that she didn’t deserve to be called brave.

“I agree with Ms. McGowan that it is inaccurate to call me ‘brave’ for wearing a garment with women’s names on it,” Portman said. “Brave is a term I more strongly associate with actions like those of the women who have been...