Since 2007, the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative has consistently published annual data on the demographics of those working in front of the camera and behind the scenes of each year’s top 100-grossing films. Recently, the team from USC released new information regarding the gender and racial representation of the top directors in 2025, allowing them to analyze director representation among 1,900 films over 19 years.
In 2025, 8.1 percent of the top 100 films were directed by women. This is a large increase from 2007, when just 2.7 percent of the year’s top films had women directors. However, 2025 was a seven-year low for women directors, far below their peak representation of 15 percent in 2020 and last year’s representation of 13.4 percent. Across the entire study period, only 6.6 percent of all directors of top-grossing films were women, equating to a ratio of 8.6 male directors for every 1 woman director. Since 2007, 104 individual women directors have made 133 top-grossing films.
Notably, there is no difference in the reception of films directed by women and men, with both male and female-directed films averaging a score of 56 on the website Metacritic from 2007 to 2025. Among different film distributors, top-performing women directors were most represented in Universal Pictures films (32 women), and least represented in Paramount Pictures films (4 women).
Of the 133 top-grossing films directed by women since 2007, 95 films were made by White women, while 38 were made by women from underrepresented racial groups. This equates to White women making 4.8 percent and underrepresented women making 1.9 percent of the 1,900 films included in the report. In comparison, White men made 78.5 percent and underrepresented men made 14.8 percent of these films. For every one top-performing underrepresented woman director, there have been 41.4 top-performing White male directors.
Only 11 Black women, five Hispanic women, and 14 Asian women have made top grossing films since 2007. Despite their significant underrepresentation, films made by these women have an average metacritic score of 62.5 – notably higher than the average metacritic scores of White men (56), underrepresented men (56), and White women (54).
The lack of women directors of top-performing films is far below their representation among all narrative film directors. Some 63 percent of the films featured in the upcoming 2026 U.S. Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival are directed by women. Thus, there is a 57 percentage point drop from women-directed narrative independent films to women-directed top-grossing films.