Number Of Female-Led Films Dropped In 2017, Compared With Previous Year

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The number of films with women as their lead characters has fallen year on year, a new report has revealed.

Despite last year’s most popular films at the US box office, ‘Beauty And The Beast’, ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ and ‘Wonder Woman’, featuring female characters front and centre, The Center for the Study of Women in TV and Film has found that 2017 saw fewer female-led films than the year before.

Gal Gadot at the 'Wonder Woman' premiere in Mexico
Gal Gadot at the 'Wonder Woman' premiere in Mexico
Victor Chavez via Getty Images

The Center’s data, based on the top 100 highest-grossing films of the year, shows that just 24% of films had “sole female protagonists” in 2017, a 5% drop from the previous 12 months.

Of the 100 films looked at in the study, 58% were deemed to have a “sole male protagonist” (that’s considerably more than double the number for female protagonists), while the remaining 18% featured “ensemble” casts.

'Star Wars' actress Daisy Ridley
'Star Wars' actress Daisy Ridley
Stuart C. Wilson via Getty Images

Year on year, there was a 2% increase in the amount of the speaking characters on screen that were women, though this figure still only went from 32% to 34%.

There was also an increase in the number of women of colour in film, though again, this is still a small figure, with just 30% of women with speaking roles being women of colour (broken down into 16% of black female characters, 7% Asian and 7% Latina).

What’s more, while only 32% of films featured more than 10 women with speaking roles, the figure for more than 10 men with speaking roles was more than double, at 79%.

Films released in the UK in 2018 with female protagonists have so far included the Oscar-nominated ‘I, Tonya’, ‘The Shape Of Water’ and ‘Lady Bird’.

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