This was up from just 11 films in 2021 and from only one movie in 2007.
The report, however, concluded that this was the lone bright spot in its findings.
The progress for women of color in leading roles is encouraging, saidDr.
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Stacy Smith, co-author of the report.
With effort and accountability, this threshold is one that not only can be achieved but easily surpassed.
Her co-authors are Katherine L. Neff and Dr. Katherine Pieper.
Even so, female actors have made huge gains since 2007, when the survey was launched.
In 2022, 44 of the 100 top-grossing films featured a female-identified actor as lead/co-lead who drove the plot.
That was up from 41 films in 2021, and more than double the 20 films in 2007.
The report concluded that optimism about positive change in film is unwarranted.
While overall improvement since 2007 is evident, the last significant positive increase was from 2017 to 2018.
In 2022, those 29 films featured 33 lead or co-lead actors from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups.
The report also found that ageism is still present in the casting of feature films.
By comparison, 35 of the 100 top-grossing films depicted a man in that age bracket.
Even so, the report concluded that women 45 years of age and older are rarely shown as leads.
Moreover, none of the distributors achieved proportional representation when it came to underrepresented leads/co-leads.
For the purposes of the survey, all movies distributed by smaller companies were coded as other.
This year, Walt Disney Studios and 20th Century were grouped together.
Subsidiary or specialty companies were categorized by their parent organization.
The report also offers several solutions to creating more leading roles for underrepresented groups.
The pathway to increased representation among leads/co-leads is one that requires change across companies.
Our analysis demonstrates that distributors are not moving collectively toward equality.
Rather, some companies have pushed forward faster in 2022 while others lag behind.
Only when every major studio and distributor reaches equity will we see industry-wide improvement.
This includes perceptions about what or who is likely to sell at the box office.
The report also acknowledged the limitations of collecting data from only the 100 top-grossing films.
As with all research investigations, it states, some limitations must be noted.
Across our annual reports, we focus on the most popular movies each year.
However, films that are less popular may be more likely to feature protagonists from underrepresented communities or girls/women.
There may be differences between distribution models that reflect additional biases about audience preferences on the part of executives.
