2025 will be the “Great Recession” for female directors, with just nine female directors in the top 100 grossing films in the US, according to a new study.
Of the 111 directors who directed these films, nine were women: Nisha Ganatra (“Freaky Friday”), Emma Tammi (“Five Nights at Home”), according to a new report from the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California. Freddy’s 2), Domie Cee (Elio), Madeline Sharafian (Elio), Celine Song (The Materialist), Jennifer Katen Robinson (I Know What You Did Last Summer), Maggie Kang (KPop) “Demon Hunters”), Hikari (“The Rental Family”), and past Oscar winner Chloe Zhao (“Hamnet”).
The 2025 figure (8.1%, calculated at a ratio of 11.3 men to 1 woman) is a significant drop from 2024, when the U.S. was in the midst of the Great Recession, when 13.4% (15 directors) of the top 100 grossing films were directed by women.
“The 2025 data makes clear that progress for women on boards is temporary,” said Stacey L. Smith, Ph.D., author of the study and founder of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. “It’s tempting to think these changes are a result of who’s in the Oval Office, but in reality, these results are being driven by executive decisions made long before the DEI ban went into effect. Many of these films were greenlit and in pre-production before the 2024 election.”
The study, now in its seventh year, examines the gender and race/ethnicity of the directors of the top 100 grossing films in 2025, as well as trends such as employment patterns by distributor and mean and median Metacritic scores by director’s gender and race/ethnicity. The report examines a total of 1,900 movies released from 2007 to 2025.
Of the 111 directors in 2024, only three (Song, Chao, and Tami) are women who have directed sample films in the past. Between 2007 and 2025, only 24 women directed at least one of the highest-grossing films. The highest-performing female directors were Anne Fletcher (4 films), Lana Wachowski (4 films), and Greta Gerwig (3 films), with 21 women directing two films.
Less than a quarter (24.3%) of directors in 2025 were from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups. This number is unchanged from 2024 (24.1%) and significantly higher than the 12.5% reported in 2007.
At the intersection of race and gender, only 5.4% of board members were women of color this year, but 2025 will be the first year that there will be more women of color (six) than white women (three). Additionally, all of this year’s female directors of color are Asian (Ganatra, Shi, Song, Kang, Hikari, and Chao). None were Black, Hispanic/Latino, Native American, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, or Middle Eastern/North African. Overall, women of color accounted for only 1.9% of all top-grossing filmmakers in 19 years, even though their films received the highest average and media scores compared to white male directors, white women, and men of color.
“When it comes to directors, it’s clear that hiring decisions are not based solely on performance,” Dr. Smith said. “If that were the case, women of color would have significantly more opportunities to work behind the camera in movies. These results show that the quality of films by women of color is not only ignored, but actively ignored.”
By distribution company, Universal Pictures (9.4%) and Walt Disney Studios (8%) were the top companies for hiring female directors over the 19-year study period. Meanwhile, Paramount (2%), Lionsgate (4.3%) and 20th Century (4.6%) had the lowest female employment rates. In 2025, Walt Disney Studios will have three female directors on its top-grossing films, and Universal Pictures and “other” distributors will have two female directors. This year’s top films from Paramount, Warner Bros. and Lionsgate had no female directors.
The report contrasts these results by showing that women are significantly more likely to direct films in Sundance’s U.S. drama category (63.6% in 2026), women to direct TV episodes (37% in the 2023-2024 season), and women to direct Netflix films (20.5% in 2024).
Read the full study on the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative website.
(Photo: Chloé Zhao is a director on the set of “Hamnet” and Celine Song is a director on the set of “The Materialist.”)
