Tag Archives: diversity in Hollywood

The Diversity Gap in the Academy Awards: Some Diversity Records Broken, But Still More Work to Do

In 2015, we released an infographic and study on the diversity gap in the Academy Awards. The study looked at racial and gender diversity over 87 years of the Oscars, through 2015:

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Star Wars in Perspective: The Diversity Gap in Sci-Fi Movies

In honor of tonight’s release of Star Wars: Episode VII, we thought we’d revisit our Diversity Gap Study on sci-fi and fantasy blockbusters. Star Wars is shaping up to be not only one of the biggest movies of the year but also potentially one of the biggest movies of all time, with ticket sales already shattering records.

For Star Wars fans, there is much to celebrate. And for fans of diversity in Hollywood, even more so: the film features British-Nigerian actor John Boyega as one of the leads. Boyega has been getting a lot of buzz since his role was announced (along with some racist comments from the Dark Side – par for the course when it comes to diverse casting of franchises, it seems), and is joined by Guatamalan-American actor Oscar Isaac, who also plays a major role. Lupita N’yongo will also star as an alien pirate, though we won’t see her face.  Continue reading

Infographic: The Diversity Gap in the Emmys, 2015

Not only are we living in a Golden Age of television, it also feels in many ways like we are living in a Golden Age of diverse television. While TV may still be more segregated than we’d like it to be, both in front of and behind the camera, 2014-2015 saw the emergence of several critically and commercially successful shows with lead characters of color.

A few years ago, we published an infographic and study exploring the diversity gap in the Emmys and on television. Today we’ve updated that infographic and tried to answer the question: Has the Diversity Gap in Television decreased? Continue reading

Update: The Diversity Gap in the Academy Awards, 2015 and our Oscars recap

Last year, we released an infographic and study on the diversity gap in the Academy Awards. The study looked at racial and gender diversity over 85 years of Oscars, through 2012. Here’s the updated study, which includes the 2013, 2014, and 2015 winners: Continue reading

Big News in Diversity: Big Hero 6 Tops Box Office

Diversity 102This past weekend, Disney released its newest action-comedy, Big Hero 6. The movie chronicles the special bond that develops between plus-sized inflatable robot Baymax and prodigy Hiro Hamada, who  team up with a group of friends to form a band of high-tech heroes.

Big Hero 6 has been getting tons of great reviews, and earned an impressive 88% fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes. Perhaps most impressively, it beat out Christopher Nolan’s highly buzzed-about sci-fi epic Interstellar at the box office, taking an an estimated $56.2M in its first weekend. That makes it the second best cartoon opening of the year, trailing only The Lego Movie.

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Dream Casting for Our Favorite YA Novels

One of the fun things about reading fiction is imagining what the characters would look like, sound like, and act like in real life. And with the recent spike in YA-novels-turned-movies, it’s not a stretch to wonder who might be cast to play some of our favorite characters. There have been some great movies recently based on YA novels, but few of them have featured diverse casts or characters. So we thought we’d give Hollywood a little help and showcase a few of our favorite movie-worthy YA novels, and how we’d cast them: Continue reading

Is TV getting more diverse? Not by the look of this year’s Emmys

This is a post by our literacy and sales assistant, Veronica Schneider.

It was no major surprise who the big winners were on Monday evening’s 66th Primetime Emmy Awards, with Breaking Bad totaling five awards and Modern Family winning Best Comedy Series for the fifth consecutive year.

Cary Fukunaga accepts his Emmy
Cary Fukunaga accepts his Emmy

More importantly, the 2014 Emmy Awards really shocked us all by showing how progressive and diversified television has become.

Kidding.

We need to look beyond the fashionable red carpet looks and the Hollywood glam and instead discuss what is plainly missing: diversity. Diverse television may pull in viewers with hit shows like Sleepy Hollow, Orange is the New Black, and Scandal, but it isn’t necessarily being rewarded. In an interview with KCPP Radio,Darell Hunt, Director of UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, said, “So far we haven’t seen a translation where the awards program reflects the increasing variety of things that are actually being made for the small screen.”

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How Diverse Were This Year’s Tony Awards?

Last year, we shared an infographic and study on diversity (or the lack thereof) in the Tony Awards and theater. Here’s what it looked like:

Tony Awards Infographic

An interview with award-winning writer, actor, and filmmaker Christine Toy Johnson illuminates some of the challenges that actors of color often face on and off Broadway:

No Asian American female playwright has ever been produced on Broadway. Ever. . . . I believe that the only way we’ll see our roles increase is if more of our stories are produced (written by and/or about us), and/or if more playwrights/directors/producers are open to having people of color play non-race specific roles they write/direct/produce.

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Lee & Low Likes… The New ‘Annie’

The trailer for the upcoming remake of Annie is out, and we’re quite excited for the fabulously diverse cast! Quvenzhané Wallis, the talented young actress who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress (the youngest nominee ever!) for Beasts of the Southern Wildplays the star role of Annie. Jamie Foxx is cast as Will Stacks, the modern version of Daddy Warbucks, Rose Byrne cast as Stacks’ trusty assistant, and Cameron Diaz plays the dreadful Miss Hannigan.

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