A new study describes 2025 as a “Great Recession” for women directors, with just 9 women directors attached to the 100 top-grossing films at the U.S. box office.
According to the latest report from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, of the 111 directors who helmed those films, 9 of them were women: Nisha Ganatra (“Freakier Friday”), Emma Tammi (“Five Nights at Freddy’s 2”), Domee Shi (“Elio”), Madeline Sharafian (“Elio”), Celine Song (“Materialists”), Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (“I Know What You Did Last Summer”), Maggie Kang (“KPop Demon Hunters”), Hikari (“Rental Family”) and previous best director Oscar winner Chloé Zhao (“Hamnet”).
The 2025 figure (8.1 %, which calculates a ratio of 11.3 men to every 1 woman) represents a steep drop from 2024, when the percentage of women directors on the 100 top-grossing films was 13.4% (15 directors).
“The 2025 data reveals that progress for women directors has been fleeting,” stated Dr. Stacy L. Smith, the study’s author and founder of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. “While it is tempting to think that these changes are a result of who is in the Oval Office, in reality, these results are driven by executive decision-making that took place long before any DEI prohibitions took effect. Many of these films were greenlit and in pre-production before the 2024 election.”
The study, titled “Inclusion in the Director’s Chair” and now in its seventh iteration, examines the gender and race/ethnicity of directors across 2025’s 100 top-grossing films, as well as analyzes trends including hiring patterns by distributor, as well as the average and median Metacritic scores by director gender and race/ethnicity. The report surveys a total of 1,900 films released between 2007 and 2025.
Of the 111 directors in 2025, only three of the women (Song, Zhao and Tammi) have previously helmed a film in the sample. Just 24 women have directed more than one top-grossing film between 2007 and 2025. Top-performing women directors were Anne Fletcher (4 films), Lana Wachowski (4 films) and Greta Gerwig (3 films), while 21 women helmed 2 movies.
At the intersection of race and gender, only 5.4% of directors this year were women of color, but 2025 marks the first year where the number of women of color (6) outnumbered the number of white women (3). Furthermore, all of the women of color directors this year were Asian (Ganatra, Shi, Song, Kang, Hikari and Zhao); none were Black, Hispanic/Latina, Native American, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, or Middle Eastern/North African. Overall, women of color still represent just 1.9% of all top-grossing movie directors across 19 years, despite the fact that their films earned the highest average and media scores compared to white male directors, white women and men of color.
“It is clear that when it comes to directors, hiring decisions are not made solely on the basis of performance,” said Dr. Smith. “If that were the case, then women of color would receive significantly more opportunities to work behind the camera in film. These results demonstrate that the quality of movies by women of color is not only overlooked, it is actively ignored.”
By distributor, Universal Pictures (9.4%) and Walt Disney Studios (8%) (8.3%) lead the way in terms of hiring women directors over the study’s 19-year span; meanwhile, Paramount (2%), Lionsgate (4.3%), and 20th Century (4.6%) hired the lowest percentage of women. In 2025, Walt Disney Studios attached 3 women directors to top-grossing films while Universal Pictures and “other” distributors attached 2. Paramount, Warner Bros. and Lionsgate did not have a woman director across the top films this year.
The report contrasts these results by indicating significantly higher percentages of women directing films in U.S. Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival (63.6% for 2026), directing television episodes (37% in the 2023-2024 season) and helming Netflix movies (20.5% in 2024).
Read the full study on the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative’s website.
[Pictured: Chloè Zhao directs on the set of “Hamnet” and Celine Song directs on the set of “Materialists.”]
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