Netflix "20% of Last Year's US Original Films Produced by Women"

Gradual Improvement in Male-Centered Hollywood Culture

Image source=Yonhap News

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Heung-soon] Global online video service (OTT) Netflix is strengthening collaboration with female creators.

On the 20th, Netflix introduced a recent report by the U.S. online media 'Quartz' stating that more Hollywood female directors than before have taken the megaphone through Netflix, saying, "A wind of change is blowing even in male-centered Hollywood."

According to a survey by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California, which statistically researches diversity in Hollywood, 20% of the 53 U.S. original films released by Netflix last year were directed by women. This is about twice the rate compared to 10.6% of female-directed films among the top 100 movies released in the U.S. in 2019.

Netflix emphasized, "To reflect the increasingly diverse demands of viewers, we have made efforts toward diversity in overall workforce hiring," and "We have also actively invested in films that were not guaranteed to succeed in the existing production environment in terms of content investment."

According to Netflix, the proportion of successful films directed by women from 2007 to 2019 was only 4.8%, but last year alone recorded a higher figure than the recent 10 years. Among these, works by women of color such as Asians and African Americans are still minimal, but treatment of female production staff and actors is gradually improving.

They added, "Rather than box office performance, content diversity encompassing themes, race, language, culture, and gender, and personalized services that can recommend content suited to individual tastes to anyone are becoming more important," and "Women, who were limited to supporting or secondary roles, are expected to exert more influence."