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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...

Although Barbie won the box office last year, a demographic analysis of the rest of 2023’s releases indicates that Hollywood is still investing primarily in male-centered movies.

Just 30 percent of the top 100 films of 2023 featured a female lead or co-lead, the lowest share in a decade, according to the latest research brief from USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. AI2 has compiled this data annually since 2007 (which, at 20 percent, featured the lowest-ever percentage of women protagonists), and last year’s mark is a substantial drop from 2022’s record-high of 44 percent.

“This is a catastrophic step back for girls and women in film,” AI2 founder Stacy L. Smith said in a statement. “These numbers are more than just a metric of how often girls and women are in protagonist roles. They represent the career opportunities offered to women in the industry…. Even by looking at the films that were moved to 2024 because of the strike,...