I followed the careers of 1,765 directors of top grossing films to work out who gets another go after a first film that doesn't quite land, and who doesn't.
I was at dinner with a VP from one of the Big Five Studios a few years ago, and we were talking about this reality. If a movie flops, for a woman it's seen as evidence she doesn't have what it takes as a director. For a man, he's still seen as having potential, and the failure is viewed as circumstantial. I think if you ran the numbers, you'd see the same thing for female showrunners on the TV side
Nice work! I keep drafting responses that get longer and longer so I’ll turn it into a post I think. Very interesting but the response is too specific and big and still evolving too much for a comment! It’s been holding my attention in a unique way. The contrarian in me I guess.
I am grateful that you are doing this research. Thank you for taking the time, putting in the effort and getting this out there! Here's hoping the industry pays attention to its biases and course corrects (though I won't hold my breath)... Also, is it terrible that I took comfort in these stats because I thought they'd be MUCH worse??
Excellent analysis, Stephen. It’s likely no surprise to you that the figures are considerably more dire for women of color directors. In a perfect world, studios would allow women to fail and then rehire them. As many of our great male filmmakers have pointed out, failure is a crucial step on the path to greatness.
Not stats but anecdotal, when I started trying to make 50% of the films I watched directed by women, it meant I ended up watching more arthouse, indie, and particularly documentary than normal simply because those "alternative cinemas" were where the films are. And the couple years I've made the 100 Original Concept Movies list, the percentage of those directed by women were higher than the overall percentage of films directed by women.
This isn't to say that the inequality doesn't exist in the arthouse world too, but it seems from my three years' experiment in looking into it that it's a little better.
I appreciate your making a point to watch our films. And it’s very probable that it’s a little better for first films, and then a bit worse for second films. But after that, oh my. I’m on my fifth film as a director, and I’m not giving up. But the air gets thinner. I taught a course for a few years at Columbia about women directors. It was the most difficult course I ever built. The academic rule of at least three films (so, a body of work) that have been academically discussed made it almost impossible to fill out a semester’s worth. And I wasn’t even limiting myself by nationality or era.
Yikes! That sounds challenging but I'm glad you figured it out! I would love to take that course. What was your biggest takeaway after you stopped teaching the course?
“At least three films academically discussed” is some interesting sausage making insight. What constitutes “academically discussed”? Would @Marya E. Gates’s book about women filmmakers count?
But, strictly speaking, a director’s work has to have been written about in an academic context — journal articles, film studies books, conference papers, dissertations — not just reviewed in the press or discussed in film-crit circles. It’s a higher bar than “well-known” or “critically acclaimed.” A director can have a great reputation among critics and audiences but still have almost nothing written about her in peer-reviewed film studies scholarship — which was exactly the problem I came across: needing at least three films with that kind of academic paper trail, and finding almost no women directors who cleared it.
I don’t remember off the top of my head but it was the usual suspects. Agnès Varda, Chantal Akerman, Kathryn Bigelow, Mira Nair, Claire Denis, Kelly Reichardt, Jane Campion… The two that don’t have this problem at all are Varda and Akerman — both have scholarship spread fairly evenly across multiple films, which is presumably part of why they anchor most “women and film” syllabi by default. That imbalance (a couple of directors so overrepresented they become the default, everyone else thin or one-film-deep) is part of the problem.
Sofia Coppola is an interesting case. Some scholars treat her seriously as an auteur, others dismiss the work as style over substance, so the discussion is more argument-about-whether-she-counts than settled analysis of her films themselves.
Anyway. Worth an essay, and one day I‘ll write it.
I mean, duh. I've been saying this on Filmstack for the last two years and everyone's like, "But Greta Gerwig!" (not that she had any flops! I don't think she did! I just mean in career trajectory and industry support) and I'm like, she's one person. And she's white and blonde and already vetted as an actor. For the rest of us... this article.
As an aside, I would be curious to see a replication of the USC Annenberg analysis of Asian representation. In particular, I wonder if there are differences in the rates of Asian male leads and Asian female leads in the top 25 films compared to the lower quartiles.
good analysis but i would not say men get second chances with losing films..35% is not a lot. i still agree with the general take on the playing field being unequal. could also analyze this by other demographics if the data is there.
I was at dinner with a VP from one of the Big Five Studios a few years ago, and we were talking about this reality. If a movie flops, for a woman it's seen as evidence she doesn't have what it takes as a director. For a man, he's still seen as having potential, and the failure is viewed as circumstantial. I think if you ran the numbers, you'd see the same thing for female showrunners on the TV side
Nice work! I keep drafting responses that get longer and longer so I’ll turn it into a post I think. Very interesting but the response is too specific and big and still evolving too much for a comment! It’s been holding my attention in a unique way. The contrarian in me I guess.
Spot on Stephen.It’s so very wrong and unfair!
Working on a piece right now about a parallel convo - this is soo helpful!!
I am grateful that you are doing this research. Thank you for taking the time, putting in the effort and getting this out there! Here's hoping the industry pays attention to its biases and course corrects (though I won't hold my breath)... Also, is it terrible that I took comfort in these stats because I thought they'd be MUCH worse??
Excellent analysis, Stephen. It’s likely no surprise to you that the figures are considerably more dire for women of color directors. In a perfect world, studios would allow women to fail and then rehire them. As many of our great male filmmakers have pointed out, failure is a crucial step on the path to greatness.
"Failure is a crucial step on the path to greatness." That part. But it took me a long to realize who that script was intended for.
It would be interesting to look into arthouse films films too, irrelevant of budget. It’s probably worse there.
Not stats but anecdotal, when I started trying to make 50% of the films I watched directed by women, it meant I ended up watching more arthouse, indie, and particularly documentary than normal simply because those "alternative cinemas" were where the films are. And the couple years I've made the 100 Original Concept Movies list, the percentage of those directed by women were higher than the overall percentage of films directed by women.
This isn't to say that the inequality doesn't exist in the arthouse world too, but it seems from my three years' experiment in looking into it that it's a little better.
I appreciate your making a point to watch our films. And it’s very probable that it’s a little better for first films, and then a bit worse for second films. But after that, oh my. I’m on my fifth film as a director, and I’m not giving up. But the air gets thinner. I taught a course for a few years at Columbia about women directors. It was the most difficult course I ever built. The academic rule of at least three films (so, a body of work) that have been academically discussed made it almost impossible to fill out a semester’s worth. And I wasn’t even limiting myself by nationality or era.
Yikes! That sounds challenging but I'm glad you figured it out! I would love to take that course. What was your biggest takeaway after you stopped teaching the course?
“At least three films academically discussed” is some interesting sausage making insight. What constitutes “academically discussed”? Would @Marya E. Gates’s book about women filmmakers count?
And yes, of course she counts. I‘m familiar with her 2025 book and happy to see it.
At least three films. That’s the first major barrier.
But, strictly speaking, a director’s work has to have been written about in an academic context — journal articles, film studies books, conference papers, dissertations — not just reviewed in the press or discussed in film-crit circles. It’s a higher bar than “well-known” or “critically acclaimed.” A director can have a great reputation among critics and audiences but still have almost nothing written about her in peer-reviewed film studies scholarship — which was exactly the problem I came across: needing at least three films with that kind of academic paper trail, and finding almost no women directors who cleared it.
Which directors cleared the hurdle?
I don’t remember off the top of my head but it was the usual suspects. Agnès Varda, Chantal Akerman, Kathryn Bigelow, Mira Nair, Claire Denis, Kelly Reichardt, Jane Campion… The two that don’t have this problem at all are Varda and Akerman — both have scholarship spread fairly evenly across multiple films, which is presumably part of why they anchor most “women and film” syllabi by default. That imbalance (a couple of directors so overrepresented they become the default, everyone else thin or one-film-deep) is part of the problem.
Sofia Coppola is an interesting case. Some scholars treat her seriously as an auteur, others dismiss the work as style over substance, so the discussion is more argument-about-whether-she-counts than settled analysis of her films themselves.
Anyway. Worth an essay, and one day I‘ll write it.
I mean, duh. I've been saying this on Filmstack for the last two years and everyone's like, "But Greta Gerwig!" (not that she had any flops! I don't think she did! I just mean in career trajectory and industry support) and I'm like, she's one person. And she's white and blonde and already vetted as an actor. For the rest of us... this article.
Loved this analysis. More, I'm always salivating over the datasets you put together to get the analysis done.
As an aside, I would be curious to see a replication of the USC Annenberg analysis of Asian representation. In particular, I wonder if there are differences in the rates of Asian male leads and Asian female leads in the top 25 films compared to the lower quartiles.
good analysis but i would not say men get second chances with losing films..35% is not a lot. i still agree with the general take on the playing field being unequal. could also analyze this by other demographics if the data is there.