Films gave up on diversity too quickly

“OBSESSION,” this year’s hit indie horror film, opened to audiences made up of 60% Black, Latino and Asian filmgoers.

- ROSHAN SETHI GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

ANNE MARIE Fox Sony Pictures "ONE OF THEM DAYS," with Keke Palmer and SZA, brought in more than $50 million at the box office. Diverse stories pay off.

“Backrooms” drew an audience comprised of 62% minority groups. “Michael” drew in 75% and “Scary Movie” topped the list with 76%.

That’s just the last four box office hits. If you look back at every hit across the last two years, the audiences — as reported by PostTrak, a widely used industry tracking service that surveys filmgoers as they exit theaters on opening weekend — were majority non-white. That’s also true, on a global scale, for “Zootopia 2,” “Lilo & Stitch,” “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” “Sinners” and “Final Destination: Bloodlines.”

White audiences have stopped going to the theaters in the same numbers they used to, yet the vast majority of movies spotlight white leads despite there being no evidence that audiences prefer them. In fact, for years, UCLA has published a detailed annual Diversity Report showing the opposite. Of course, the vast majority of film executives, writers and directors are also white.

For a few years, when it was socially and politically expedient, Hollywood experimented with diversity. After strikes by the writers’ and screen actors’ guilds — and after a shift in political headwinds — the industry retreated to the strategy it believed had always worked: casting white leads. Maybe, people wondered, the pendulum had swung too far in the diversity years; maybe we “forced” something people didn’t want.