Hollywood Is Leaving Money On The Table By Not Prioritizing Diversity, New Study Shows

Movies with more diverse casts consistently earned more at the box office and generated bigger streaming audiences in 2020.

Diversity and representation are both a moral imperative and, according to a new study, an economic necessity for Hollywood. In 2020, movies with more diverse casts consistently earned more at the box office and generated bigger streaming audiences. Viewers are demanding that the pop culture they consume better reflects America’s diversity, meaning that when Hollywood doesn’t prioritize accurate representation, it’s leaving money on the table and hurting its bottom line.  The Hollywood Diversity Report was released Thursday, the latest edition of an annual study of the relationship between Hollywood’s bottom line and diversity in front of and behind the camera, from UCLA professors Darnell Hunt and Ana-Christina Ramón. Their newest report examined global box office revenue and viewership numbers of the top 185 films released in theaters and on major streaming platforms in 2020. Movies that featured 41 to 50% actors of color performed the best at the box office, while films with fewer than 11% actors of color performed the worst.