File Photo: Michael B. Jordan (L) and director Ryan Coogler accept Best Movie for 'Black Panther' onstage during the BET Awards at Microsoft Theatre in Los Angeles, California, on June 24, 2018. (Xinhua/AFP)
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) -- Black directors see historic gains in 2018 as more Hollywood top-grossing films were directed by black filmmakers than at any time before, said a new study from the University of Southern California (USC).
A total of 16 Black directors worked across the 100 top films of 2018. The number of Black helmers in 2018 is 2.7 times higher than the number in 2017 and twice as high as 2007, according to the annual "Inclusion in the Director's Chair" report from Professor Stacy L. Smith and the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
2018 has the highest number and percentage of Black directors across the 12-year sample time frame, said the report released on Thursday.
However, the report noted that this jump is almost solely due to Black male directors and not their female counterparts with only one of the sixteen Black directors was female.
Multiple factors may be contributing to the rise of Black directors, including increased activism since #OscarsSoWhite in 2016, the critical and financial impact of films such as "Moonlight" and "Hidden Figures," and the rise of popular shows with Black leads and casts on TV and streaming platforms, the report revealed, adding that independently or interactively, these factors and undoubtedly others are changing the ecology of who is attached to direct top performing feature films and what receives the green light at the studios and mini majors.
The reports found that the director's chair still remains overwhelmingly white and male despite Black directors made history last year. The percentage of female directors has not changed overtime with 108 out of 112 directors who helmed the 100 top-grossing films of 2018 were man. Only four women directors helmed the 100 top-grossing films of 2018.
Unlike their Black counterparts, there has been no change in the number or percentage of Asian directors over the 12-year sample time frame, said the report.
Only a total of 4 Asian directors (3.6 percent) worked across the 100 top films of 2018. And all four of these directors were men, including Jon M. Chu ("Crazy Rich Asians"), James Wan ("Aquaman"), Aneesh Chaganty ("Searching") and Jay Chandrasekhar ("Super Troopers 2").
"Sixteen of the directors of the top 100 movies last year were black - this historically high figure is nearly three times greater than the six black directors working in 2017 and twice as many as the eight black directors working in 2007," said Smith in a press release.
"While we do not see this finding mirrored among female or Asian directors, this offers proof that Hollywood can change when it wants to," She added.
