Among the top 100 movies at the domestic box office, just nine Hollywood films had female directors at the helm, according to a new study that found the number of female filmmakers on that list had dropped significantly from the previous year.
With 102 men occupying directors’ chairs for the other films on the list, the report, issued by Stacy L. Smith of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California, found that the percentage of female directors dropped this year to 8.1 percent from 13.4 percent in 2024. Women with hits included Emma Tammi (“Five Nights at Freddy’s 2”) and Nisha Ganatra (“Freakier Friday”).
The lower number of female directors is not a product of a lack of talent, the report said. Films by women received ratings from critics that were similar to those by men. In fact, women of color received the highest praise.
“It is clear that when it comes to directors, hiring decisions are not made solely on the basis of performance,” Smith said in a press release. “If that were the case, then women of color would receive significantly more opportunities to work behind the camera in film.”
Nearly a quarter of directors were from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups, the report found, which was virtually unchanged from 2024.
Opportunities for women directors reached record lows following the 2008 recession and continued into the early 2010s, but in recent years there had been an uptick in women directing major productions, peaking in 2020 at 15 percent.
This year “represents a complete reversal of any progress that was achieved behind the camera over the last few years,” Smith wrote in the report.
While some male directors like Tyler Perry and Steven Spielberg have been prolific in directing top-grossing films — 18 and 13 movies, respectively — the number of female directors with multiple hits under their belts is a fraction of that. Only three women — Anne Fletcher, Lana Wachowski and Greta Gerwig — have released more than two top hits since 2007, Smith’s earliest data point.
At a time when theater audiences are waning and diversity initiatives are being scaled back, Smith said it would be easy to associate the downward trend with the current political and cultural climate. But instead, the report said production studios were largely to blame.
Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. and Lionsgate did not hire a single woman director for the films included in Smith’s study in 2025.
Since 2007, women have directed the most films at Universal Pictures. Notably, it is the only studio at which a top executive is a woman, Smith found. That would be Donna Langley, NBCUniversal’s chief content officer.
The lack of women at the helm, though, is exclusive to studio movies.
More than half of the films selected for the U.S. dramatic competition at the Sundance Film Festival have been directed by women over the last eight years. In television, the Directors Guild of America found that 37 percent of episodes were directed by women in the 2023-24 season. And on Netflix, just over 20 percent of movies released in 2024 were directed by women.
To Smith, the Netflix numbers suggest a potential benefit if the streaming company outlasts Paramount in the battle to acquire Warner Bros.
“It is clear that women will have far more directing opportunities if Netflix acquires Warner Bros. than if Paramount does,” she wrote in the report.
In 2022, the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative started its own program to support one female director of color, offering a $25,000 scholarship to finance a thesis film, and created a direct mentorship program for students in American film schools.
This year, Smith offered several recommendations. The first is obvious, she wrote: hire qualified directors who have already proven their ability. The others include using clear criteria to evaluate directors for jobs and continuing to invest in pipeline programs to support emerging female talent.
Michaela Towfighi is a Times arts and culture reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early career journalists.
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