Box Office Diversity Report 2018
A Diversity Check on the Top 25 Buzziest Films of Last Year, in Data
Written by Li Lai
At Mediaversity Reviews, onscreen representation is always on our minds. But lately it seems to be on everyone’s minds, as last year’s works like Get Out, Hidden Figures, Wonder Woman, Girls Trip, or Coco all stormed the box office, collectively signaling a long overdue shift away from the old boys’ club.
This year, Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians have broken barriers, while works like A Wrinkle in Time, Netflix’s To All The Boys I’ve Loved, or even under-performers like Annihilation are offering fresh alternatives to the usual Hollywood fare.
We celebrated some recent wins in our December wrap, “Top 10 Most Diverse Films of 2017.” But through all the noise, the question remains: Did diversity sell at the box office?
There are countless ways to approach this question. Academic papers such as Dr. Darnell Hunt’s “Hollywood Diversity Report 2018” or private studies like the one commissioned by Creative Artists Agency consistently find that films with at least 30% non-white casts earn the highest returns. Their rigorous findings are invaluable, but meanwhile, Mediaversity approaches representation from a more qualitative standpoint. Not just casting, and not just talent behind the camera, but how inclusive is the actual narrative? Are there stereotypes? And did that holistic impression have any correlation with box office results?
“Not just tallying up cast and directors, but how inclusive is the actual narrative of each film? Are there stereotypes? And did that impact box office results?”
To shed light on these questions, we grabbed a sample of the “buzziest” films of the year by using the Top 25 Most Voted Feature Films list on IMDB¹ and assigned each one a diversity score. We call this the Mediaversity score and it measures on a mix of gender parity, racial diversity, and technical merit, while also accounting for any portrayals of LGBTQ, disability, seniors, minority religions, and body diversity when applicable. (Read more about our grading system here.) In short, Mediaversity judges a film on how “intersectional” it is—a shorthand term that recognizes overlapping identities.
By taking a cross-section of some of the year’s most talked about films, ranging from cash cows to total flops, we can get a snapshot of the relationship between diversity and box office earnings in 2017.²
Which Films Were the Most Diverse?
To lay the groundwork, let’s look at the Top 25 films in order of how well they scored at Mediaversity, on a 1 to 5 scale with 5 being the most intersectional. (Full diversity reviews of each movie can be found at the end of this article.)
Download data for the above chart here.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi leads the pack with a Mediaversity score of 4.5 out of 5, buoyed by its female leads and characters of color in complex roles. In second place, Get Out breaks barriers with its unique allegory for black experience in America, but its thinness on female characters keeps it from being intersectional. In third place, Wonder Woman champions female empowerment but its non-white characters are flat and the story is anchored by a heterosexual romance, despite Diana’s confirmed LGBTQ status in its source material.
by Gender
Audiences clearly responded to women in leading roles in 2017. The Top 3 earners in the domestic market were all carried by female protagonists: Rey of The Last Jedi, Diana of Wonder Woman, and Belle of Beauty and the Beast. It’s a notable, if unsurprising parallel that these same three films held the highest Gender scores at Mediaversity:
Download data for the above chart here.
Despite the positive strides made, however, a solid 7 of the 25 films we looked at fail women spectacularly. Dunkirk, Baby Driver, It, Kingsman 2, King Arthur, The Hitman’s Bodyguard, and The Mummy each received the lowest possible score of 1 point in their respective reviews.
by Race
Racial diversity fared significantly better than gender equality, with the Top 25 films averaging a Race score of 2.91 out of 5 versus 2.31 for Gender. Since both categories are measured on comparable metrics, this means the films fared 26.0% better on race than gender .
Download data for the above chart here.
by Sexuality, Disability, and Other Lenses
To take into account the many groups that have historically been ignored or exploited in media, we add or deduct from the Mediaversity score. If a film’s scope is too narrow to include one of these lenses, no penalties occur—except, however, for long-running series that are judged by their overall body of work. You’ll see this in effect below, where both The Last Jedi and Thor: Ragnarok are newer additions to huge franchises whose omissions of LGBTQ characters have become more and more unrealistic as time goes on.
Download data for the above chart here.
How Did Diversity Perform at the Box Office?
Diverse movies easily outperformed their non-diverse peers among the Top 25 “buzziest” films of 2017.
Download data for the above chart here.
The highest-earning tier—of films that grossed over $400 million at the domestic box office—displays an impressive average diversity score of 4.06 points, driven by inclusive blockbusters The Last Jedi, Beauty and the Beast, and Wonder Woman.
Download data for the above chart here.
by Multiple of Production Budget
It would be remiss to talk about box office success without considering production budgets. After all, by revenue alone, Get Out falls somewhere in the middle of the pack with a worldwide gross of $255 million. But this obscures the fact that the movie earned 56.7x (!!!) its production budget, a multiplier so outstanding it leaves all other 2017 films in its profitable dust.
So let’s run a diversity check using this metric of success—how many times a film earned back its production budget through worldwide gross—and see if the positive correlation between diversity and profit still holds true.
Download data for the above chart here.
Considering the runaway success of Get Out, it may be surprising to see the highest tier of budget multiplier dip down in average Mediaversity score. But this is easily explained: the only other film to occupy this tier is It, a film that earned just 2.00 points at Mediaversity. Now, if we weighted our results by multiple of budget, then Get Out would factor in more heavily—56.7x its production budget vs. It’s multiple of 20.0x—and this top tier would have garnered an average Mediaversity score of 3.60, nicely displaying a consistent trend towards diversity. But for the purposes of this short brief we erred on the side of simplicity, giving equal weight to each film in their respective tiers.
Download data for the above chart here.
Conclusion
The two surprise hits of the year, Get Out and It, tell very different stories — the former being an incisive look at race in America, and the latter, a nostalgic, nearly all-white and male-driven vehicle of escapism. But beyond these diametrically opposed examples, the data reveals a critical insight in how we consume media:
Diversity sells! Inclusive movies outperformed non-diverse peers across multiple metrics in 2017.
The three highest grossing films of the year — Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Beauty and the Beast, and The Fate of the Furious — all feature diverse casts with strong women in major roles. While movies have long focused on straight, white, and male narratives, media consumption is shifting away from such stories and increasingly towards diverse ones, where demographics of all stripes can see themselves reflected as heroes.
Mediaversity celebrates this trend. After all, fresh perspectives will only enrich everyone, movie fans and studio heads alike.
Mediaversity Reviews is a project that grades TV & film on gender, race, and LGBTQ diversity. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, or email us at li@mediaversityreviews.com to join the conversation!
Links to Reviews
Alien: Covenant
Baby Driver
Beauty and the Beast
Blade Runner 2049
Dunkirk
Get Out
Ghost in the Shell
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
It
John Wick: Chapter 2
Justice League
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
Kingsman: The Golden Circle
Kong: Skull Island
Life
Logan
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
The Fate of the Furious
The Hitman’s Bodyguard
The Mummy
Thor: Ragnarok
War for the Planet of the Apes
Wonder Woman
¹ List of Top 25 Most Voted Feature Films in 2017 was pulled from IMDB on April 15, 2018.
² Revenues and production budgets were pulled from Box Office Mojo on May 15, 2018.
