Across the country, increasingly diverse audiences are preferring diverse content in theatrically released films, according to UCLA’s new Hollywood Diversity Report. The full report, released Thursday, takes a deep dive into audience preferences, casting diversity and box office trends.
Films with casts that are 41-50% BIPOC performed best in several categories, including highest median global and domestic box office, highest average theatrical release, highest average opening weekend position, and widest international distribution. This range of diversity closely reflects the 45.2% BIPOC share of the U.S. population, suggesting that films that reflect demographic realities will resonate with audiences. BIPOC moviegoers are also over-indexed as ticket buyers for films with a 21-30% BIPOC cast and films with a BIPOC cast greater than 40%.
The report also looked at genre trends in 2025 to further analyze audience preferences. Science fiction films had the highest median global box office revenue, and horror films had the highest median return on investment. Audience composition also varied by genre, with white moviegoers making up the audience for biopics, documentaries, and dramas, which coincidentally had the lowest median box office receipts. In contrast, BIPOC audiences made up the majority of audiences for animation and horror films, and nearly half of audiences for action films.
Ticket purchasing patterns also reveal the growing influence of diverse audiences. BIPOC moviegoers purchased the majority of opening weekend domestic tickets for five of the top 10 films and 11 of the top 20 films in the 2025 global box office rankings. Female moviegoers purchased the majority of opening weekend tickets for 2 of the top 10 films and 4 of the top 20 films, and audiences ages 18-34 purchased the majority of opening weekend tickets for 4 of the top 10 films and the top 11 films. 20.
Diversity in casting was also common in the highest-grossing films. Six of the top 10 films and 12 of the top 20 films had casts that were 30% or more BIPOC. Additionally, three of the top 10 films and eight of the top 20 films had more than 40% women in their casts, while two of the top 10 films and four of the top 20 films had casts in which more than 20% of the actors had a known disability.
For each BIPOC audience group, 10 to 13 of the top 20 movies had casts that were 30% or more BIPOC. Even among white moviegoers, seven of the top 20 films had casts with at least 30% BIPOC representation. Similarly, 13 of the top 20 films with female audiences had casts that were at least 40% female, and 12 of those films had female-focused stories.
The report concluded that Hollywood needs to focus on maintaining diversity across racial and gender lines to keep people watching movies.
The number of films starring women has fallen sharply from the historic high of 2024, with the number of films starring women dropping from nine to six among the top 20 films at the global box office. The number of films in which women accounted for the majority of audiences decreased from eight to four. In 2025, of the top 20 films with the highest percentage of female audiences on their opening weekend, 19 had female leads or co-leads, 13 had gender-balanced casts, and 12 featured female-centered stories. The box office success of Barbie, Inside Head 2, Zootopia 2 and the live-action Lilo & Stitch underlines this demand, according to the report. Meanwhile, the overall proportion of female roles decreased from 41.3% in 2024 to 37.1% in 2025, while the majority of male roles increased from 51.5% to 66.9%.
In the report’s conclusion, the co-authors say, “People want stories they can relate to and relate to in the movies they watch. In a society where people no longer interact directly with each other, movies offer people the opportunity to connect with others they would never come into contact with in real life and help them understand their common humanity. That’s why meaningful representation in film is so important and why Hollywood must adapt to meet this need.”
